Gunmouth
by Gramophone Blue
Summary: The orcs peered at her for a moment, rough faces entirely unreadable.They gestured at her with their thick hands or weapons. In their loud bouts of orchish, Meviahd caught the word 'ogar'. 'Kill.' Her stomach rose into the back of her throat again.
1. Chapter 1

I used to write on here for Warcraft all the time, but I've been gone for years. My writing and ideas have changed so much in that time, I decided to start anew. I wonder if anyone will figure out who I am ........

Essentially, 'Gunmouth' is a romance, though it's not very apparent at all at first. I wanted to write something that tested my characters to their core, instead of a nice, happy-ending sort of romance.

This chapter starts a bit slow, though I could think of no other way to start it. Hopefully you'll bear with me.

Wow belongs to blizz, then.

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On the day that her mother died, Meviahd cut off all of her hair.

Meviahd knew that before she disappeared, it was said of her that she was headstrong, a black sheep folded into the flock of her mother's perfect daughters. That it was said that she behaved like the rash young brood of the short-lived humans, or that she had a long road to walk before the lived up to her sisters' glory.

A long time later, after Meviahd disappeared, she would learn it was said of her that she had possessed a fiery will. That they said she would certainly have come in to her own in her due time, and that the loss of her was a tremendous one. It was true that absence warmed the heart.

On the day that her mother died, Meviahd saw her body buried among the green-sprigged plants of Darnassus. Her grave was marked with a tree, grown by the elven druids to mourn her passage. Meviahd's mother was a healer, killed in a border skirmish at Azshara. Standing next to her sisters, two of them healers themselves, another a Sentinel, Meviahd could only feel a painful, keening sort of ache. She had never known the death of someone so intimately. Their father had died when Meviahd was only an infant, too young to remember. But absence and loss are different thing, though both are bitter, dark-skinned fruits. It was a sickness Meviahd had never felt before.

That night, the elf took a dagger to her hair and cropped the waist-length cords into inch long spikes that stuck up from her head in a white halo, like a dandelion puff. She had inherited her mother's looks: dusky purple skin and hair the color of a handful of salt. It's tufts stood from her head, uneven and and ugly. Meviahd turned this way and that in front of the mirror, admiring the skin of her scalp showing through the part in her hair, purple like a bruise.

She crept out of the window in the house her mother and sisters had shared, scaling the sides with ease. Meviahd would show Devi Devi what she had done.

Devi Devi was a hippogryph, though Meviahd would never say he was _her_ hippogryph. More that she was his Night Elf. The distinction often made no sense to other races, especially since the Alliance so frequently made use of the hippogryphs for transport, and thought them mere beasts. But just as they underestimated the dragons at times, so had they underestimated the hippogryphs, who could talk and feel emotions just as the humanoid races could.

Meviahd had been chosen by Devi Devi when she was just young, though Devi Devi was not young himself when he made the decision. It was common for hippogryph hatchling to bond with Night Elf children, most eventually becoming air-borne archers. But a mature hippogryph picking a Night Elf child was scarce, barely heard of. Meviahd's mother only told her that she had gotten lost in the forests one day, and had returned in the company of Devi Devi. They had been inseparable ever since.

"You have ruined your hair," Devi Devi announced when he saw her. He had a voice like water rolling over the rocks of a deep, powerful stream. Hippogryph facial expressions were hard to read, but Meviahd could easily see the disdain on his avian face.

They were in the hippogryph roost, a spacious, open room on the second floor of the stables. Devi Devi presently shared the space with two other hippogryphs, though as many as ten of the large creatures could fit in the roost when all their warriors were home. The other two ignored Meviahd, keeping to their own nests, mute and somber. Devi Devi was easily the oldest of them all. Though he was still a handsome creature, and his teal, blue, and orange plumage still shone with a youthful luster, his many pronged antlers were starting to betray his age.

"It's not ruined. It will grow back." Meviahd slipped down on the wall beside him, crossing her legs underneath her. Devi Devi just continued to give her the same, disapproving look. Meviahd was young in his eyes, but in the eyes of her people she was old enough to be an adult. Perhaps even to be married, or soon to have children of her own.

"You should be with your sisters, this is a time of togetherness."

"I cannot be there while they mourn and stain my mother's memory with their sadness. She would want us to react. To avenge her."

"I do not think so." Devi Devi shifted slightly, moving his back legs, his heavy hooves clattering on the stone floor.

"It is what _I_ want, then. I need to do something other than sit here pretending to be sad when I can feel only anger. Please, Devi," Meviahd's hands tightened into fists across her knees. The leather gloves she was wearing creaked. Meviahd had already suited herself in her riding gear: dark leather pants and a half-sleeved shirt, as well as a wide pair of shoulder pads, all trimmed in Devi Devi's shed feathers. For a moment the hippogryph felt a sympathetic twinge, but he pushed it back. It was for Meviahd's own good.

"I refuse to take you. Anywhere. And later, you will thank me for not allowing you to make the decision out of grief."

The Night Elf gave him a glare cold as a river bottom. He could see her hands shaking. Devi Devi softened slightly and murmured, "Give it a few days, Mevi. If it is still what you want, I will help you."

She didn't say anything to him, just stood swiftly and ducked out of the roost doorway. He had seen the bitterness in the way her mouth twisted, and how she clenched her teeth like a bear trap. Meviahd was a stubborn soul, but she always eventually saw reason. One just had to give her time. Sighing, Devi Devi curled back up in his stable. He would try not to worry; with any luck Meviahd would return to her mother's house. There wasn't much trouble she could find in Auberdine.

Leaving the roost, Meviahd shouldered off the sympathetic looks from elven guards who had known her mother. She knew just as well as Devi Devi that no one elf here would agree to find her transport or the like. It wasn't that Meviahd didn't know she was making an uninformed decision. Meviahd was by no means stupid, but she was driven. Anything to fill the hollow in her chest.

Her ticket out was a caravan of goblin traders. It was not often they passed through the area at all, Darkshore was of course predominantly Night Elf, and the Night Elves saw little good in the green-skinned merchants. The goblins had been forced into Auberdine on account of short supplies.

Meviahd offered them a handful of silver coins, speaking quietly to the caravan leader behind one of their huge wagons. He gave her a suspicious look, scratching the stubble on his pointed, green chin, but he agreed.

They left early the next morning. Meviahd watched the sun rise over the lip of the ocean behind them as the caravan bumbled along down the path through Darkshore. Her intent was to reach Azshara. It was a foolish, rash thing to do, like cutting her hair. Meviahd knew that. But the keening ache she carried in the hollow of her chest would give her no peace. She felt pulled to Azshara, if only to stand in the autumnal, haunted grounds and grip her blade. To wait for the enemy to show it's face. In a few days, Devi Devi would find her and agree to help her, and together they would pick up where her mother had left off. With any luck, it would be that simple.

They were stopped at just past Astranaar. The goblins had insisted on haggling in the elven town, pausing to count their gold and inspect their rations. They were a fickle bunch: refusing to give Meviahd food or water for their trip, but insisting she watch the two-wagon caravan while they poured over their silver in behind the larger vehicle. Later, Meviahd would admit she wasn't really on lookout. She was distracted, staring off at the shifting tree leaves high, leaning against the wagon sluggishly. When the orchish rogue snuck behind her and pressed his dagger to her neck, Meviahd couldn't have been more shocked.

Hell broke loose on the caravan. One of the goblin merchants came peeling out from around the wagon wheel, an arrow sticking from his shoulder like a grotesque accessory. He was carrying a blunderbuss longer than he was tall, struggling to load it, tripping as another arrow caught him in the back. The third rent his throat, blood spilling from his neck as if poured from a tea kettle.

Meviahd twisted a little, keenly aware of the whetted dagger at her neck. She could feel it slicing a paper thin cut across her jugular. Just like the goblin who lay on the path, moving no more, one more inch and she was done for.

Her hand was inching towards her own blade, bit by bit, moving down her side to the hilt there. She never made it. Something blunt and hard hit the back of her head. Meviahd's vision swam, her head bobbing like a jug full of water. Her vision dropped.

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When Meviahd came to, she vomited. Around her came a few low cries of disapproval in gruff, weatherworn voices. She could taste acid bile and copper blood in the back of throat, could smell her vomit down her front. Her vision cleared, as if she'd been underwater and had just broke the surface, and things were worse.

Tusks and green faces leered down at her. Meviahd was on her knees, her hands bound cruelly behind her head. She could feel blood matting the short spikes of her hair to the back of her head. The familiar weight of her weapons were gone from her hips.

The orcs peered at her for a moment, their rough faces entirely unreadable as anything emotive. They gestured at her a bit with their thick hands, splaying fingers and pointing weapons. In their loud bouts of Orchish (the most rudimentary of which she had been taught), Meviahd caught the word '_ogar'_. 'Kill.' Her stomach rose into the back of her throat again.

A heavily accented voice, a bit richer than the orcs', broke through the ranks. They seemed to shrink from it a bit at first, then stood with their chests puffed out. As if challenged.

The interloper was a troll. His skin was a darker, bluer color than the orcs', his features angular. As if carved from wood. Kneeling, the troll shot his hand forwards to clench Meviahd around the jaw none-too-gently. She veered away from the three-fingered hand, shivering as it fastened around her chin. The troll wrenched her head to the side, continuing to speak in a gapless, lilting slur of words. He pointed to her cheek, twisting her head again to indicate the other side of her face. Among the words spoken was a constantly repeated phrase, 'Thrakk'reva', but Meviahd had no idea what it meant.

Finally the troll released her, standing in front of her now and berating the assembled orcs. Where before they had seemed like they might put up a fight, they now stood down. Glancing at one another, they finally began to nod or shrug, some even beginning to wander away. The troll huffed, beginning to issue what seemed more like commands, pointing in various directions. Meviahd was now vaguely aware they were still in the forest, though there were no discernible land marks enough for her to know exactly where. He head was throbbing.

The orcs dispersed. Meviahd gingerly began to test the bonds around her hands, flexing her wrists and ankles, as she found those to be bound as well. The ropes were tight, so much so that Meviahd could feel pins and needles creeping through her hands and feet.

"Ah wouldn't try that if Ah were you, girlie." The troll spoke in a surprisingly well-developed Common. He kneeled in front of her again, meeting her hate filled gaze with a surprisingly calm look of his own. His eyes were a murky berry color. They were the same color as his long dreadlocked hair, a vibrant, almost gaudy wine hue. He continued to speak lazily, his curved tusks bobbing.

"The ropes ah real tight. Besides, if you go runnin', where you think you'll go? You think these orcs gonna think twice before they put an arrow between your shoulders? Nah, girlie. Behave yourself."

Meviahd spat in his face. He paused, running a tongue over his teeth, close lipped. Steadily, he raised a hand to wipe his cheek. Frowning and mumbling something in a language that wasn't orchish, the troll stood.

"Was gonna be nice. Guess not." The troll snapped his fingers and a couple orcs were summoned by the sound. They leered at Meviahd, grinning like jack-o-lanterns. The troll threw them a few commands, waving his hand airily and striding away from her. She struggled, through she didn't make it more than a few inches before the orcs were upon her.

Meviahd felt her skull split, and was unconscious a few seconds later. Knocked into sleep once more.

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Hope you enjoyed. More to come.


	2. Chapter 2

Hey guys, thanks for the reviews! Especially flying Octopus. I love it when people really get a hold of my stories like that, really chew them over. In response to your comments, I'm planning to reveal a little more of what happened with Meviahd's mother, as well as more of her past, bit by bit. You're right, though. I could have used some more fleshing out.

As for the Night Elf customs, and even the orchish language, I'm taking a few liberties here. The orchish especially, since Blizz has openly admitted they never really planed the language and only made 'orchish sounding words' at first. I figured some words might be interchangeable, nice catch with 'ogar!'

Anyways, I'm going on an alternating point of view for this story, so we get every other chapter from the troll. :)

Thanks, guys. Also, if you've got comments, I'd love to head them.

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Jandali did not like hostage situations.

The mission was a simple one gone completely over-complicated. The orcs didn't trust Jandali, and in a way Jandali didn't trust the orcs. Not in the way of battle, where he knew they'd protect him. It was more that he didn't trust them to follow his smaller commands. Like the elf, for instance. As if Jandali had time to worry about the blasted elf. But if he didn't keep an eye on her, who knew when one of the orcs would 'accidentally' make an ends of her. They didn't want to cart her around anymore than Jandali did. Besides, if they didn't trust the troll, they certainly didn't trust the elves.

The other complication was that their mission, their whole surveillance, seemed to be all for naught. Recently a large amount of goblin caravan traffic had been reportedly traveling to Alliance outposts. A very large amount. Questioning the goblins always got the same answer, that the Alliance had more gold to offer, but Horde leaders were growing suspicious. If the little green traders were double crossing them, there'd be trouble. Some had suggested the goblins were selling the Alliance weapons they weren't offering the Horde. Small groups had been dispatched in secret to inspect some of the caravans. 'Inspect' was a loose definition.

Jandali had gotten the orders to accompany one such group. Word passed from Master Gadrin to his teacher, Zuri, and finally to him. Orders that were one person away from Master Gadrin were important, they must be followed. So Jandali found himself the 'leader' of a band of orcs who were certain they'd be leading themselves. Not the past-his-prime troll shaman who knew too many languages. They didn't need him to 'inspect' a few little goblin caravans. To eavesdrop on the pathetic elves, maybe. But who needed that anyways?

Then there was the elf. The groups had been commanded to take any people they thought might prove worthwhile. The goblin traders were mostly small fries, all their caravans filled with the same foods, armors, and weapons Orgrimmar saw pass through it's gates everyday. But the elf was different. Jandali had immediately recognized the markings, bars of white fanning out from under her eyes like spread wings.

Horsehawk riders. That's who had those. Jandali had seen them on the high cheekbones of a force of mounted archers he'd once seen rise over a battlefield. The Night Elfs had a long, convoluted word for the bloody creatures. There were rumors that they were even intelligent, known to speak to their riders. Rare, those elves. Rare enough to fit the conditions handed down in their orders.

They just rubbed him the wrong way, hostage situations. Jandali couldn't think of anything more annoying than having to pull the struggling, stubborn night elf through the Ashenvale Forests. They were already testing their boundaries. Ashenvale crawled with elves, like ants shifting on the mossy grounds.

They'd had to gag the elf. Jandali was taking no chances with a woman who would dare spit in his face. No bladed threat or flare of magic would steel her tongue if she thought it would do her some good, he figured. They'd stuffed a wad of cloth between her teeth, tied tight around the back of her already battered head. Once in a while she made muffled, angry noises around the moist wool. Her glowing eyes seared with hatred every time Jandali caught them. Not that he was worried about her, there was nothing she could do.

There was a more pressing matter. Jandali had been scanning the skies since that night, ordering two of the orcs with them to do the same at all times. The high trees above them gave Jandali no comfort. Where there was a rider, there was a mount. A confrontation with the elf's horsehawk could be dangerous. Deadly.

It didn't help that the men were in low spirits. They had little to report back when they returned home, save for the recalcitrant elf hostage. Who knew if she was worth anything at all? The terrain was treacherous; they'd been scaling the mountains near the border of Felwood to avoid any confrontation. Worse, the sun would soon set and they'd yet to travel as far as they'd wanted, at least partially due to the hostage. The cliff faces and pebbly rubble of the Ashenvale mountains were no place to sleep.

One of the orcs, Drak'thog, came to walk beside Jandali. He was third in command of the party, placing under his older brother, Gar'thog and Jandali himself. The troll found Drak'thog to be far more manageable and intelligent than his brother, one of the friendlier of the bunch.

"_What are we going to do about the horsehawk? When night falls, it will be near impossible to see it." _Drak'thog asked in orchish.

"_I have a plan." _Jandali told him, casting a glance back at the elf. She was growing tired now, stumbling every once in a while. It seemed she was plagued with dizzy spells as well. Sometimes her eyes would go unfocussed, and she would make muffled noises through the cloth in her mouth. Jandali suspected she might had a mild concussion from the couple of blows she'd taken to the head. In a way, the troll felt bad for her. Her spirit wasn't broken, but it was eroding. Even an enemy could find empathy in that.

Hours later they broke camp on top of a flat, rocky outcropping that carved a pocket into the cliffside. The orcs didn't mind the dark, their night vision easily allowed them to set tents and dole out their rations without much more effort. It was all done with a precise air of efficiency, swift and practiced. They'd done it all before dozens and dozens of times.

The only change in routine was the elf. Jandali took care of her himself. He lashed her bonds around the trunk of a scraggly, medium-sized tree almost directly in the center of the camp so that she could sit uncomfortably, but no more than that. The whole while she was giving him a strange, almost expectant look. It was a black, laden expression, as if the elf were waiting for something.

Ah, Jandali figured. She was waiting for her horsehawk to arrive and gut them all. Jandali snorted, she was in for a nasty shock. He untied the gag from the back of her head, and she sucked in an unhindered gush of air greedily.

"Don't get your hopes up, girly." Jandali told her darkly.

"I'd spit in your face again, but I don't want to waste the strength." She responded evenly, despite ragged breath.

"She cuts me to the quick, Lady Daggertongue." Jandali winked at her and moved off to set up his own shelter for the night. Jandali and Gar'Thog both got their own personal tents, but Jandali had to set his own himself.

After the camp had been fully assembled, Jandali brought the men together and outlined his plan. They gathered the necessary provisions and spread out through the surrounding cliffs, each orc hunkering down in a shadowy nook to wait. Jandali took the most dangerous post, kneeling in front of the hostage elf and beginning to build a fire a few feet from where she kneeled.

"It is rather cold, thank you." The elf bit out sarcastically.

"Hush, you." Jandali told her. He was listening hard, long ears cocked for the near imperceptible sound of wings on the night air.

Normally they would light no fires. With Ashenvale Outrunners always a threat, the group had tried to remain as undetectable as possible. Five fires lighting a camp and sending smoke into the air would easily be enough to have several of the female warriors sent up to find them. But one fire was nothing to set the alarm for. One fire was a traveler too tired or too poor to find an inn for the night; it wasn't the enemy on their doorstep. But perhaps it was enough to attract different attention.

Yes, there it was. Feathers pooling with air. A shushing whisper like a forest shifting.

Before he turned, Jandali saw the elf's face light with hope. He spun around to catch the few triumphant seconds of the blue and orange horsehawk rising over the cliff face like a malevolent moon. The creature looked mythical, noble; it's glossy wings were spread high and it's claws were poised to strike.

It arched ungracefully and hit the rock face with a smash.

Several orcs on the cliff sides above the horsehawk had thrown ropes across the entrance of the pocket, across the horsehawk's back. They jumped down from their lofty perches, pulling the creature to the ground with their collective body weight. The horsehawk thrashed, raking it's claws across one unfortunate orc who happened to stray too close to it's front feet. The rest of the orcs were quick to their work, moving to tie their ropes to more scrawny trees that had found purchase in the hard dirt. They would not hold the horsehawk long, but they didn't need to. The troll called briefly upon the spirits of the Earth, pleading for the trees to stand strong for a few more minutes.

Behind him, the elf was moaning, "No, no, no..."

Jandali calmly took his staff from it's holster on his back and held it to the elf's face. He carried a long wooden staff decorated with feathers and bones, topped with a blue gold-flecked stone. The stone quickly grew white hot with magic, lighting the subtle curve of his hostage's jaw like a heated iron brand.

"Be calm, beastie. Don't want me to ruin her pretty face, huh?" His thick jungle accent rose booming over the tumult of the horsehawk's struggling. Just as he figured, the creature immediately fell still. It's bright eyes shone steely in the light of the flames, intelligent and calculating.

"Don't listen," the elf yelled, and Jandali turned back to her, thrusting his glowing staff even closer to her cracked lips. He faced the horsehawk with a challenging look.

"You even spread one of those wings, Ah'm gonna be meltin' her nose off."

The orc Gar'Thog raised a crude spear over the creatures back, ready to bring it down. The horsehawk turned it's antlered eagle's head to it, but did not move other than that. For a moment the camp hung on those seconds, suspended in time. A cry from the elf broke the spell. Jandali, who had been looking at the horsehawk rather than his hostage, nearly jumped out of his skin when the elf actually ran past him. She had managed somehow to slip from her bonds, her wrists rubbed raw and bleeding profusely. She caught the orcs by surprise as well, wrestling the spear from him and swinging it at his head. It was obvious she didn't know how to use it but it did not stop her from brandishing it at the orcs. She twisted this way and that in what was surely a pointless, outnumbered endeavor. Her face was wild, feral, the white spikes of her hair sticking up in some spaces and matted to her head in others. Jandali's staff had burned an ugly welt on the corner of her mouth. She was pulling her lips back from her teeth like a wild animal exposing it's fangs.

"Easy, girly. Easy." Jandali took a few cautious steps forwards, holding his hand up for the orcs to stand down. Maybe it was something in that animal look of hers that inspired his pity. Or maybe it was the way his head compressed and began to ache.

Jandali did not like hostage situations, they ended with difficult events like this. Either way, he decided almost immediately it would be easier for him in the long run.

"Back off. Back offa me. Don't kill Devi Devi," the elf's voice cracked at the end. She tightened her white knuckle grip around the spear in a way that made Jandali know she wouldn't think twice to stick one of the men with it.

"Think, girlie. You outnumbered here, you fight and it's only gonna go bad for you. Just listen to me," the troll leaned on his staff, trying to appear totally in control, "Ah'll make a deal with you, eh? We bring the horsehawk with us, he don't make no trouble, you don't make no trouble, and this all go smoother for everyone. No one has to die, yeah?"

The elf's burning, bloodshot eyes bore into him. The spear shook in her nervous, desperate hands.

"If you had any honor you'd have killed me at the caravan."

"You ain't worth nothing to us dead, girlie. And neither is your mount. So put the spear down and we'll work it out."

She hesitated, and Jandali figured she wouldn't have surrendered had not the horsehawk announced in a booming, deep voice, "Do it." The elf choked out some harsh, grating sound from deep in her throat and dropped the spear. It clattered off the cliff rocks at her feet. The orcs rushed forwards to wrench her arms behind her back.

"Tie them tighter this time, you hear?" Jandali growled at them, "An' for the love of of Wilds, don't be knockin' her on her head again. She's gonna lose her sense."

Sucking in his breath, the troll paused to watch as the orcs carried out the last part of his plans. They were circling the compliant horsehawk's chest with ropes, effectively pinning his wings to his body. Soon, they would tie loops around the creature's ankles and string them together so that he only had enough slack to walk with. The horsehawk was watching Jandali with the same icy eyes, though he allowed the orcs to move about him freely.

As they worked, Jandali moved to stand before the great creature, saying softly, "She won't come to no harm if you do what we say."

"Can you promise me that?" The horsehawk demanded in common, his deep voice skeptical. But there was something like hope there.

"It's a simple hostage situation, no need either of you lose your heads."

"Promise me." The creature responded forcefully, his beak opening in a hiss.

"_You have my word."_ The troll replied in Darnassian. He knew his accent was incredibly thick, but the creature seemed to understand. He nodded his head, though Jandali could tell he wasn't entirely trusting. Not that Jandali blamed him. The troll couldn't truly promise such things with the utmost of truth, but the words tasted convincing on his tongue.

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Hope you all enjoyed! Please, I love feedback, so if you have some make sure and hit the review button. The next chapter is back to Meviahd's point of view again, hopefully it's not too confusing. And to all those celebrating it, have a happy Turkey Day!


	3. Chapter 3

Special thanks to FOOS for their ever-precise commenting. Thanks! I'm trying to keep things believable and canon as possible, though I feel like I'll be drifting in some areas with the lore. More like 'what ifs'. I've got to push the story a little, y'know?

To Bush Viper - It is impractical for them to do so. Jandali's not much of commander in the military sense, hopefully this chapter outlines it a little more.

And to everyone else who reviewed, thanks so much! The reviews are what really propel me to keep updating this.

Anyways, WoW belongs to Blizz and yaddah yaddah....

* * *

Meviahd felt hot and sick with guilt.

Over the night they'd tied her to a tree far from Devi Devi. While an orc guard apiece sat watching them, Devi Devi and Meviahd were not permitted to make a sound. The elf had tried to call across their camp in soft Darnassian, but her guard had brandished his blade at her, grumbling. When the first few hazy grays of twilight were touching the sky, Meviahd fell into a fevered, uncomfortable sleep.

She was roused only a few hours later by the rough-handed orcs. During the morning they'd improved the bonds around Devi Devi. The orcs were fearful of the hippogryph, Meviahd could tell from the way they moved around him. They were careful and concentrated when securing him.

Meviahd's own bonds were retied, cruelly tightened so that they bit into the skin on her wrists. They ran with blood and raw, rubbed skin. When the company began to move several orcs took the rope that tied around Devi Devi's neck and began to pull him along.

They began to march again.

Ahead of her, Meviahd could see the troll shaman striding at the head of the pack. His gaudily vibrant dreadlocks, which were threaded through with beads, bones, and feathers, easily rose above the much shorter orcs. Every once in a while, she caught the sight of his tipped ears turning back towards her, as if he were checking up on their progress. Obviously the leader, it had been his cleverness that had cost Devi Devi his freedom last night. Meviahd inwardly sneered.

It had also been at his mercy that the hippogryph lived.

_Mercy_. Meviahd hated to use the word, and struggled internally to find another. It was no 'mercy' that wrapped the ropes around her wrists so tight. It was no 'mercy' that caked the back of her head with dry blood and made it ache with every step. And it was certainly no 'mercy' that had pulled Devi Devi to the rough rock ground where ropes could reach him.

Meviahd hated the troll because he was clever, because he had captured her, and because she owed him for his mercy.

The day was warm and thick. Ashenvale forest had an almost heady smell to it, verdant and abundant with plant life. The air was nearly opaque, heavy with the brazen smell. Taking in great, green lungfuls would leave you with the taste of it on your tongue. The humidity made for hard travel. Even though they had come down from the high cliffs to march on the mossy ground for the day, Meviahd stumbled often. Her feet were bruised and blistered.

But the worst was her head, always her head was in pain. It throbbed to the rhythm of her steps, and the steps of everyone around her. The green-tinted daylight burned. No one had bothered to clean her shirt after she'd been sick all over the front the first day, and the smell of it sinking into her leather in the heat was making her nauseous all over again.

Instead of hours, it seemed like weeks before the day ended. When they moved back into the craggy cliffs to make camp Meviahd was almost compliant with gratefulness for the end of the march. She allowed the orcs to half carry her to her post for the night. They murmured murderously, barking out words she figured might have been commands to move her feet, or not to let them drag, but she had no way of knowing.

The heavily accented voice broke through Meviahd's hazy mind. It was the troll, of course. Meviahd turned her head so she could see over the shoulder of the orc that had been tying her in her place for the night.

The troll stood casually, long limbs at ease, staff on his back. His nonchalant air insulted Meviahd to the bone, especially when she could see Devi Devi being restrained for the night behind him. The troll said a few more things in orcish, laughing once when one of the orcs seemed to jibe him good-naturedly. He waved a three-fingered hand at him. The rope attached to Meviahd's wrists exchanged hands. It was the troll pulling her along now.

"C'mon, girlie. We got dealin' to do." He told her, voice almost bored. A shiver passed through Meviahd's spine. 'Dealing'? She'd heard horror stories from Alliance races, tales whispered around campfires the nights before battle. The Horde was known for it's unmeasurable cruelty; physical torture was only just one of your worries.

The troll's tent was set at the back of the rocky plateau they'd settled upon for the night. It was nothing extravagant, only a slightly higher quality than those of his men. It was a little larger too, with enough room for Meviahd and himself, but only just. He pulled her into the tent, but did not bother tying her rope to something solid. Instead, he offered her a rolled up sleeping pad to sit on. He took one himself, sitting cross-legged and facing her.

The tent was lit by a ball of glowing white magic encased in a glass bubble. It swung back and forth from the top of the tent ominously, but provided good light. For the first time Meviahd was able to truly get a good look at the troll. She had dully noted before that he was wearing a sleeveless leather shirt with a high neck, as well as a set of simple calf-length pants with a long kilt thrown over them. On closer inspection they were very finely made, painted with purple and blue runes. They spoke of a higher rank, though not of one that usually ordered soldiers through the woods.

He was also older than she had originally guessed. Trolls had faces that looked carved from wood, deeply angular and accentuated by their long, aquiline noses. It was often hard to tell their age. But Meviahd could see that this one's face was more lined with wrinkles, and there were a few shines of grey here and there in the temples of his dreadlocks. He was probably around forty, by human standards, old but physically prematurely aged beyond the norm. Meviahd's mother had carried something of that look: too much wisdom in her eyes, too many stresses. Perhaps if she made it out alive Meviahd would look the same.

"You got the fear of something in your eyes. Don't worry, girlie, Ah'm not gonna do you any real harm. Strictly business, need to know the worth of my goods." He pulled a pack from the side of the tent and began to take things out of it, laying them in between himself and the elf. Behind the pack Meviahd could see the bronze barrel of the stolen goblin blunderbuss glinting in the white light.

Meviahd licked her cracked, chapped lips. From the pack the troll produced a few flasks of some liquid that had stained the skins dark and sweet around their tops. Also brought forth were a series of little bundles wrapped in waxed paper, and some spicy smelling jerky, dried but still with a hint of moistness, bread flecked with nuts and little pieces of fruit. Meviahd's mouth flooded with saliva and she immediately knew the troll was baiting her.

"Eat, drink," came his casual command.

"How do I know it's not poisoned?"

The troll gave her a calculating, shrewd look.

"Girlie, you don't seem too dumb. Think about it. Am Ah gonna drag you halfway through these bloody forests just to poison you in my tent? Believe me, elf, you a burden. If Ah was gonna get rid ah my headache, I woulda done it a while ago."

For a moment Mevaihd sat, her teeth grit. But the smell of the food, the intense hunger she'd felt for the past few days, was too much. She fell upon the supplies like an animal, chewing as fast as her jaw would allow. Her hands, tied together in front of her, were clumsy and messy with the little wrapped packages. When she drank the dark, fruity liquid sloshed from her lips and down her chin, cold on the burn welt across her chin. She barely paused to breathe. The troll watched her with an amused expression she found she absolutely hated. Meviahd slowed herself, straightening the hunch in her back.

"You have to feed Devi Devi." She said suddenly.

"The horsehawk? Sorry, girlie. Ah think he can go another few days without, and there's no way Ah want him any stronger than he already is now." When Meviahd instantly stopped eating, the troll frowned and growled, "Ah maybe am regrettin' saying you didn't seem so dumb. Too many knocks to the head, Ah'm thinkin'. Eat, elf. Save your strength."

Reluctantly, Meviahd began to pick at the food again. She was puzzling over ways she might be able to bring something, anything, to Devi Devi. But the chances were slim, not even possible. Over and over in her head she could see him crashing into the cliffside, struggling under the ropes.

"Here's how it happen," the troll began, pulling his legs in a little closer to himself, "We take you to Orgimmar, and the Alliance give us something to have you back. A little exchange happen somewhere nice and safe, maybe Booty Bay, maybe Ratchet, and tha's it. You get to go home, we get to go home."

"Yeah," Meviahd bit out, her words laced with acid, "'That's it.' Easy."

The troll pursed his lips at her for a second. He had a thick bottom lip, which did not easily curl around his curved tusks.

"You should be glad Ah'm even tellin' yah. Most wouldn't. And most wouldn't feed yah either. But maybe I feel a little bad about the bit with your bird, so Ah'm tellin' you now. You cooperate with us, we nice to you, and we all go home."

Meviahd felt rage boil to her surface. How dare he tell her he was being nice? _Mercy_. She felt like spitting at him again. Or maybe she'd lash out, beat his face with her tied hands until the fibers of the rope rubbed his nose red and bloody. She knew it would do nothing, that it would only make things worse. Her hands tensed anyways. Readying.

"Ah'm Jandali," he said, snapping Meviahd from her trance. He offered no surname, and apparently hadn't seemed to notice the storm behind her eyes. Instead, he was calmly chewing on an end of jerky and leaning one elbow on his bent knee. Meviahd said nothing, just blinked at him almost owlishly.

"Helps if I have your name, girly. Makes the process ah proving to your people we have yah a whole lot smoother. Yah said the horsehawk got a name? Devi Devi?"

Still, Meviahd sealed her lips. If she had any dignity left she would not spend the last scraps of it 'making the process smoother' for the troll. He seemed equally aware of this. The tone of his voice implied he was running through the procedures just to have them done. He didn't seem to believe they'd actually work, as if he'd already sized her up.

"Ah didn't want to have to pull this one, but Ah did make a promise to the horsehawk that Ah'd try and keep your pretty head safe. You don't want me to break my promise, do you? Or maybe we get rid of him first, he be more trouble in the long run."

"Meviahd," she said almost instantly, turning her eyes from him, "My name is Meviahd."

"You gotta last name, girlie?"

Hesitation, then, "Moonweaver. Meviahd Moonweaver."

She wasn't lying. She wanted to desperately, how easy it would be to tell him an alias. As if he would ever know. But she couldn't, not when Devi Devi hung in the balance.

"Meh-vee-ahd. Doesn't roll of the tip of the tongue, does it girlie? Mevi and Devi Devi, huh?"

Meviahd said nothing, though she felt the sudden sting of his words pass through her like a poison. In his most gentle moments Devi Devi would call her by the shortened pet name. Other than that, it was only her mother who ever called her 'Mevi.'

"Mevi," the troll repeated, a wry smile curling around his tusks. He seemed close to laughter. Meviahd didn't even bother to snap at him. Perhaps if she didn't make something big out of it he'd leave her alone. The troll seemed to guess she wasn't taking his bait, falling serious once more. He had an odd way of switching between emotions with little transition in between. His smiles would immediately be replaced by tight-lipped frowns. Meviahd noticed there was a notch above one of his tusks on his top lip, as well as a few nicks across his nose, and a little vertical slash under the corner of his right eye. He was banged up, a seasoned warrior.

"Alright, elf, listen. Ah'm serious, Ah don't like doin' this either. But it gotta get done. We drag you round all day with your heels dug in the ground. Every step is effort. What can I do tah make you more cooperative?"

Meviahd considered this for a moment. She was tempted to speak with acid, telling him that half of her slow steps were caused by lack of food, or having barely any water, or the jolting pain in her head. But it wasn't entirely due to that: Meviahd _had_ been purposefully slowing the group. In her duty to the Alliance she felt she ought do anything possible to make it harder on her captors.

A little glimmer of something was brewing at the back of her mind.

"Let me speak to Devi Devi." she allowed her voice to drop low with regret, "He and I fought before I was captured, we have not spoken since. You can have your guards close. But... Perhaps if I could speak to him in the mornings before we marched, it might keep me through the days."

"Liar," the troll said immediately, almost casually, "Think Ah'm stupid, girlie? Not going to let you plot with the beastie. And don't think Ah can't understand your tongue. Darnassian be something Ah'm fluent in."

"Stand there yourself, then. Watch me as closely as you want. Just please, I need to speak to him." Meviahd allowed her voice to drop low in her throat, grating and raw, "You do not understand. He is myself in another body. To be separated such as this is a torture worse than any of the days ordeals."

The troll's face was unreadable and immobile. The only movement in the tent was his jaw grinding back and forth, ruminating over the dried jerky between his teeth. Finally he let loose a sigh.

"And you promise this gonna make you more cooperative?"

Meviahd almost smiled. She'd been right, this troll was no true commander. Were the burly orc captain first in command instead of second, she'd never have gotten this far. Instead, Meviahd swallowed her elation and attempted to look relieved and grateful at the same time. It was a hard act to accomplish.

"Then perhaps it is true the Horde beasts have pity after all." She said quietly.

"Don't push it, Meh-vee-ahd Moonweaver. You still sleeping tied to da tree tonight."

Without any sort of struggle, Meviahd offered her bound wrists to the troll so he could grab the rope there. He seemed shocked, but not suspiciously. Pleasantly surprised, Meviahd thought. Inwardly, she felt something warm and racing stirring her heart back to belief. She was not lost yet.

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Sorry this one took so long this time, guys. I had finals week and it really kicked my ass. But now I'm on vacation. Hope you guys liked it. If you did, leave a review!


	4. Chapter 4

Thanks for the feedback, guys :D And yeah Bush Viper, I've always loved writing for trolls, and Jandali is a real treat. Meviahd's childishness, for me, is a little less amusing to do, but I assure you she evolves. I couldn't keep her the way she is for long without finding her boring.

Also, the way you say her name is Meh-vee-ahd, like Jandali said it at the end of the last chapter. I wanted something complicated someone who wasn't an elf would have a lot of trouble working their tongues around.

Anyways, read and enjoy (hopefully). I'm on vacation from school for about a month and a half now, just finished my finals and reviews. So hopefully I can update more frequently.

And WoW belongs to Blizz.

* * *

Jandali didn't trust the elf as far as her could throw her.

Technically, she was a slim little thing and he could probably get her at least a yard or two. But that was what he'd told Drak'thog, the younger and more amiable orc brother, about the elf.

"_I do not trust her more than the length I'd throw her." _He spat in orcish, finding that the human metaphor became clumsy when crammed into the orc grammar style. To poor Drak'thog's blank face, Jandali amended, "_I trust her no more than one trusts a hyena in the pig pen."_

Drak'thog nodded, here was something he could make sense of. The eccentric shaman was often caught up in himself and hard to understand, but was engaging once involved in conversation. Drak'thog, who'd tried his hand at writing war songs when he was a bit younger, could at least somewhat related to the troll's love for words. If anything, it was an easy conversation sparker between the two. But first and foremost, Drak'thog was a warrior.

"_And yet you let her have what she wanted._" Here Drak'thog's voice took a little bit of a flinty note. He was more soldier than Jandali could ever have been, and the troll knew it. The orc captain Gar'thog had been even more forward, openly criticizing Jandali's decision in front of the rest of the men, and making a big show of disapproval while the elf was allowed her few words with her mount. The atmosphere surrounding the little party was a thick and tense one, but the ranks had not broken yet. One could count on orcs for being obedient; they would still follow the order Thrall had given them. And that meant the shaman stayed.

It was a ploy to cement them more to their allies. Recently a band of shamans had started to branch off from the Horde more and more, claiming something almost what the druids had with their Cenarian Circle. Nothing had been set in stone, but these shamans were becoming more like independent groups rather than answering to Master Gadrin, and therefore Thrall. Master Gadrin was scrambling fast to continuously prove that the shamans who had stayed were a loyal crew. Zuri, Jandali's teacher, had told them that his and his peers' leadership on the crew was a way of showing their allies that the troll shamans were a valuable group. And for the most part, Jandali figured that was the case. Most shamans _would_ be suited for leading raiding parties. But not Jandali, keeper of tongues.

Lost in this train of thought, Jandali didn't realize he'd kept Drak'thog waiting for a response for so long. The orc was starting to look uncomfortable. Easing his face into a grin, Jandali murmured, "_I did see you slip her some bread and water before we marched today. You must at least feel a little bad about it. We are not used to this, you and I. Dragging around prisoners. No, you would want to fight braves in battles."_

"_And you would want to crouch over dusty books and blind your good eyes all day, old one." _Drak'thog's joking tone fell away and he said more stonily, "_I only gave her a little food and drink. It is not nearly as dangerous as allowing her near the Horse Hawk to speak."_

Jandali decided to say nothing to this. Something small and mean inside of him told him that he was the leader, and he didn't have to answer to anyone but himself. They marched in silence for a bit longer before the awkwardness between them melted again and Drak'thog began to discuss the meaning behind an ancient, commonly-sung battle song.

The day passed mostly uneventfully. Jandali was pleased with himself. They were making good time; this night would be their last in the Ashenvale Forests. The next night they would make camp in the Barrens, and by mid day Jandali would be able to rest his tired bones in Orgrimmar. With the weight of a job well done resting on his name, Jandali figured he'd have at least some down time for himself.

He had been a bit disappointed to find out his hostage was not from a higher family. He knew a little of the night elf hierarchy and society, and all of their old families had recognizable names. 'Moonweaver' was not among them, and was probably a commoner's surname. It didn't necessarily mean she was worthless, but had she been a Ravencrest or a Stareye... Jandali sighed. Wishes weren't going to help him now.

The night fell without event. Camp was made closer to the base of the cliffs in a little hollowed out cave. In the good spirits of an easy day the orcs even allowed themselves a quick fire to heat their food and light their faces. They exchanged war stories and talked about those they had at waiting for them at home. There was even a female in the group,a strong orc warrior, who talked about her woman at home. The troll was not directly included in their talk. He sat outside the circle and merely listened. Jandali was fascinated by them, though he would never tell it to them.

Further outside of the circle, under the close eye of the first watch, the elf and Horse Hawk were silent. Both had been given some water for the night and had settled to the posts they were tied at without fuss.

True to his word, Jandali had allowed them to speak in the morning. Their words had been quiet Darnassian apologies, stiff at first, then more heartfelt. For a moment Jandali had seen the spiny little elven she-wolf soften, her face pinching with guilt. But it had passed just as quickly as it had come. Jandali was quick to hurry their exchange, pressing that they must move.

And true to her word, the elf girl Meviahd had bee cooperative. She did not pull back with every step, and made a true effort to keep the pace of the day's march. Jandali was feeling rather proud of himself for finding the middle ground.

The next morning he allowed them to speak again. As if comforting herself, Meviahd spoke to the Horse Hawk about what she might do when they were returned home. A lot of her nostalgic babble was nonsense to Jandali, all names of people he'd never met before and memories the girl had of them. She was almost strangely immature in that way, speaking of friends and her sisters rather than of a lover. She might have even been old enough to be mentioning children's names, but she spoke of none. Jandali hurried them less this time, but still insisted they cut their conversation short. It had begun to rain, and the pebbly cliff on Ashenvale's edge were treacherous once more.

That day they made poor time. They had only just transitioned into the yellow edges of the Barrens plains. The tall, buff-colored grass whipped in the storm winds. Thunder rolled along the flat ground like a wave building power to crash into beach rocks. The men, unable to find and sort of shelter, pitched their tents under a small copse of trees that gave little protection from the elements. Out in the cold rain unprotected, Jandali could hear the elf coughing into the late hours of the night.

The morning was a dark one, still rainy with a swath of fog. It was a bad storm, one of the few the Barrens would see all month. The watch had already scattered in their haste to pack their belongings and move camp. Orgrimmar could be reached this day if the marched hard into the night. Jandali was left standing with the elf and the Horse Hawk, who was still bound to the ground.

"_If I don't make it_," the elf was saying in Darnassian, her voice tinged with some sorrow, "_You have to tell my mother I love her. Will you tell her for me, Devi?_"

"_Meviahd..._" the Horse Hawk paused for a moment, clicking it's beak, then said, "_But of course you will make it."_

"_Maybe not_," the elf responded, her voice quiet in the storm. A thunder clap made Jandali jump, it was so loud and sudden. One of the orcs dropped something and cursed vehemently, and the troll turned slightly to the noise of it.

When he turned back, the elf was gone.

Jandali roared, anger washing through him like an ignited flame. He began to yell, summoning the orcs to him. Immediately they set up a howl as well, Gar'thog's voice rising above the rest.

"_I told you it was a bad idea. The cunning bitch could be anywhere. She was a rogue."_

Nearly frothing, Jandali threw his head this way and that, reddening eyes searching for the elf in the fog. At first it seemed hopeless, then he caught sight of movement just as the back rope around the Horse Hawk's waist. A sharp little stone twitching back and forth, shredding the rope.

Jandali flailed out his arm, catching the stealthed elf across her left eye and revealing her where she crouched next to her mount. She was ripping furiously at the wet chords of rope with her little stone, her teeth grit, eyes focused in utter concentration. Jandali, completely gripped by rage, didn't even remember there was a staff on his back. He began to lash out at her with his bare fists, raining blows down on her head, back and shoulder. One sent her sprawling on the ground. Jandali ignored the warning hiss of the Horse Hawk.

Suddenly his spreading wings clipped the troll in the back of the head. Meviahd had gotten through the ropes enough for him to rip the last few fibers. Pummeling the air with those powerful wings, the Horse Hawk began to tear at the rest of his bonds. He tossed his head and shred the ropes tying him to the tree with his pointed beak.

Devi Devi rose in the air and, with a long, heart-wrenching screech, took off into the clouds. Sitting up in the mud, Meviahd was watching his ascent into the storm with sorrowful, hopeful eyes. Jandali snapped.

He set upon her again, screaming curses and swears. Swinging his arm, Jandali caught the side of her jaw with a vicious backhand that thumped her head off the mud again. In the rain her blood-matted hair was starting to smear down her neck. She put up no fight, laying prone even when the troll gave her a harsh kick to the stomach. The circle of orcs gathered around him said nothing, seeming almost stunned by the troll's loss of control. After a while he stopped, standing hunched and breathing raggedly over the elf's prone body.

Meviahd began to laugh. It was scratchy and soft, but it was a laugh.

"You idiot," she said, looking up at him from the mud.

Jandali knew he'd lost control of the situation. She was right, he'd been a fool enough to trust her, and he'd pay dearly for it. The troll cast a look towards the steely skies, brows knit. More than likely the Horse Hawk had gone for help. Who knew how long they had?

"_Tie her,"_ Jandali spat, his voice red and raw, "_We move now."_

The orcs had a new understanding of their leader, and it was one they knew to be volatile. They did his bidding without questioning it. Even Gar'thog was silent, packing the rest of his items and readying himself for a march. The orcs tied the elf hostage without a problem. She offered no resistance, she merely stood grinning stupidly. There was a purple bruise darkening around her left eye, but she was smiling a toothy, coyote grin.

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I was wondering, do any of y'all play WoW on a roleplay server? Have any suggestions? I never seem to be able to find one that actually works. Oh well, hope you dug it.


	5. Chapter 5

Thanks for the reviews, everyone!

WoW belongs to Blizz.

_________________

Meviahd reveled in the rain on her stinging bruises.

They were marching again. The rain began to fall in buckets, sheets of it cascading over the tired soldiers. It was practically a flash flood. The Barrens would soak it in like a sponge and the puddles they trudged through now would be gone by the morning. Earlier the shaman had stopped to ask the elements for a break from the storm, but in his rash state of agitation he had obviously not been respectful enough. The spirits had denied him his wish, and so the party marched for hours through the foggy, wet afternoon.

Soon, Meviahd could feel something prickling her back: the feeling of being watched.

The orc who had given her the bread and water earlier made a sudden sharp demand. The rest of the men stopped, resting uneasy hands on the hilts of their weapons. All Meviahd could hear was the patter of rain on the packed ground. But she could _feel_ it still, that horrible pin-and-needles fear.

All hell broke loose.

First came the night elves. Meviahd's heart burst with joy to see the familiar glowing eyes of her own race, and to hear the wild cat calls of their saber mounts. They came out of the fog like avenging souls, an attack from the rear that just managed to catch the orcs off guard. There was a moment filled with only the sound of falling rain, cat paws hitting the earth, and orcs taking in great gulps of breath before the dive. Then their weapons clashed.

The night elves almost evenly matched the orcs, a dozen to the orc's fifteen. They had let their saber mounts escape the fury of the battle and were now bearing down on the orc soldiers on foot. Magic flashed through air, steel sang through the wind. Meviahd, hands bound and useless, began to back out of the fray.

Tearing away from the scene, she craned her neck to the sky, eyes peering through the fog and the bruised storm clouds in search of a glimpse of turquoise feathers. Instead Meviahd caught sight of several forms moving down towards the fighters at an alarming rate.

Harpies. At least twenty of them. Meviahd could only stare. Their lithe, vicious bodies cut through the rain. As they swooped closer Meviahd saw, even through the fog, a madness in their eyes. Their mouths were open and coated in froth.

The harpies fell upon elf and orc alike. Meviahd watched in horror as the brutal winged women swung down, talons extending and plunging into the nearest flesh available. One elf let loose a high, keening wail as a harpy pummeled bodily into her. The two landed in a tangle of flesh on the ground, the harpy snapping at the elf's throat like an enraged dog. Another harpy had hooked the curved claws of her feet into an orcs shoulder. She hung heavy on his neck like a gruesome chest plate, swiping great, streaming red gashes across his face until he barely had any nose left. It all happened in seconds' time.

Meviahd's blood was made of ice and fog. She wouldn't remember screaming, but she had screamed, her voice rasp and hoarse. Her heart fluttered like a wounded thing in the steel prison of her ribcage. It took all of her effort to stop and gather her control. Meviahd was not a foot soldier, but as a military archer she had been trained to keep a level head in dire situations.

The elf rogue had been lucky enough to have backed in close to a tree before the harpies had struck. She leaned against it, chest heaving, and concentrated on the spacing of her breaths. Draw in, count to ten, draw out, count to ten, draw in... The rain became a different place. The screams of battle became a different place. The wet sounds of sharp objects cleaving through flesh became a different place. She felt the exact moment her body became the shadows and could be seen no more.

Meviahd opened her eyes, having closed them without realizing, and saw the battle ground before her with new horror.

Harpies, still more than a dozen left if one were to try and count their darting bodies, still ripped anything that happened into their range. Their movements were ones of madness: jerky motions only aimed for violence, for the splatter of blood. Their reddened mouths shone dripping with pink-tinged rain.

But more to Meviahd's disbelief, the elves and orcs did not focus on them. They lashed out at anything that wasn't their own kind. Meviahd stared transfixed as an elf ignored the harpy clinging to the armor on his back, instead swinging his mace towards an orc with a deep wound under one eye. The harpy reared it's crazed head and began to gnaw on the nape of the elf's neck. He reached a hand back to frantically pull at it's wretched face and the greasy feathers of it's scalp. But he would not end his fight with the orc until the other warrior had pushed a sword through his throat, effectively stopping them both.

The troll, Jandali, was yelling. Meviahd could hear his accent rising thick above all the noise. He did not speak in only Orcish, but Common as well, and even Darnassian.

"_The harpies, the harpies first! The harpies you fools!"_

His call wasn't heeded. He fought one off of himself, his staff crackling and emitting great sparks until the black-feathered harpy assaulting him lay in a charred heap at his feet. For a moment Meviahd thought Jandali looked sickened, something like nauseous horror entering his face. Then pain, quick and sharp and surprising.

A night elf huntress, having fought off a harpy herself, had swung her polearm towards the distracted troll's heart. Jandali had just managed to deflect the blow, swinging his gauntleted arm down in time to push the iron-tipped spear from it's path. Instead the sharp head plunged deep into his side, twisting into the flesh above his hip. Even from a distance Meviahd could see the agony that it caused him. The spear had not gone fatally deep, but in her haste the elf huntress wrenched it from him at an angle, carving a wicked gash through his side.

The orc, the one who had been so kind to her that morning, was behind the huntress now. On the battle field he was in his element, moving his thick, sturdy body in ways more graceful than Meviahd could have imagined. He drove his double-edged axe down between the elf's shoulder blades. Even from across the field Meviahd could hear the crunch of bone. The huntress dropped like a stone, motionless in the mud. The troll fell as well.

The battle did not last more than ten minutes after that. The gnashing of teeth, the clang of weapons, the splash of bodies falling to the earth, began to diminish. There was only one orc standing now, the one who had defended the troll. His remaining enemies were harpies; all of the elves lay prone in the trampled prairie grass, all of the orcs were alongside them. The five harpies left fell upon the last orc without pity. His strangled cries were the only sound save for the plaintive calls of the saber mounts searching for their riders.

After the orc stumbled and fell into the mud, the harpies rose from him screeching into the air. With their black plumage they looked like grotesque, bloated flies rising from the corpses. When they disappeared into the sky, nothing else moved on the battle field.

For a long time Meviahd found she could not move herself. The rain abated, slowing to a sprinkle, then came back as a roaring storm once more. Hidden in the shadows under the tree, the elf could barely believe what had happened. The past few days had seemed surreal enough: first the death of her mother, followed by the complete derailment that was her kidnapping. Now she stood alone, the dead bodies of her orc captors and the elves that might have been her saviors just feet away from her.

The storm slowed again. The rain became a low drizzle, the fog curling in thicker. Meviahd peeled her soaked back from the tree and began to inch forwards. Nothing in the field had stirred for quite some time.

She stepped delicately amongst the bodies, placing her feet in the reddened slurry of mud

between dead splayed hands and fallen weapons. The orcs lay with their huge mouth open and filling with water that pooled pinkish around their yellowed tusks. The elves' glowing eyes had been extinguished. They stared up into the sky sightless, like glass marbles.

Meviahd stopped to lean down and inspect the butchered body of a harpy closer. This one had different plumage, red and white, and was lying with it's face in the mud. She gingerly prodded it over with her toe and grimaced at the result.

The harpy's face was covered in sores. They were red and angry, swelling with pus and ranging from the size of a seed to the size of a large nut. The little pustules gathered at the corner of the harpy's mouth, over one of it's eyes, and over one side of it's nose like spreading growths of mold on a bad fruit. Investigations of the other harpy bodies revealed more of these sores on their faces, hands, legs, feet, and even the skin across their chests and stomachs. They were nothing Meviahd had ever seen before. She didn't dare touch them, moving on to inspect more bodies for signs of life;

The troll. Meviahd caught the sight of his vibrant dreadlocks rising in a tangle slightly above the body of the harpy next to his head. She debated for a moment, teeth grit, and then began to pick her way over to him.

His eyes were closed, and the gash on his hip was a scowling, open mouth of a wound. Meviahd paused, then kneeled on the ground in front of him to inspect it closer. A thick stream of blood was running from it, staining the kilt and pants he wore and puddling underneath him. But if he was bleeding, he was still alive. Resting a hand on his chest, Meviahd felt it rise and fall shakily. His heartbeat was slow.

A noise behind her made the elf whirl around, standing as she did. Her hands were still bound, but she held them in front of herself like a club. She had expected more harpies, perhaps they'd seen movement and come again to investigate. Instead, standing in front of her was the orc from before, the one who'd given her bread and water that morning. He was barely recognizable, bleeding from deep wounds in several places on his face. His leather armor had been pierced by something larger, a sword or an axe, more than once. Meviahd was surprised he was standing at all.

Swaying, the orc came to stand beside her, looking down at the troll. Meviahd didn't strike out at him. She backed up slightly, but otherwise stood next to him. After a few moments the orc turned to her, pointing down to the harpy corpse by the troll's head.

"_Hulak._" He rasped, voice bubbling with blood, "_Hulak._" He raised his arm and pointed above Meviahd's head, repeating the word again. The elf turned to look where he was indicating, squinting through the fog until she saw the hazy outlines of trees far above her on some hills. He pointed at the harpy again, repeating, "_Hulak."_

"Harpies... You think there are more up there?" She asked. The orc just gave her a blank look, obviously not understanding her. Meviahd pointed to the harpy, then up to the trees above. The orc nodded.

"Not good." The orc said suddenly in Common. His accent was extremely heavy, barely understandable. He was looking at the troll once more. Meviahd almost told him that he himself did not look good. The orc seemed close enough to death, she was shocked he could walk or talk at all. He was looking at her expectantly now, his deep set eyes questioning.

Meviahd stayed frozen. Maybe some part of her knew what he was asking, but the rest of her refused to accept it. When she made no move the orc leaned down and pulled the troll's arm up and over his shoulder. The troll was so tall his feet dragged on the ground. Straining, the orc gave a barking noise of pain, shifting Jandali on his hip. He began to walk agonizingly slow.

_Mercy_. Meviahd set her jaw tight. She had known it earlier: she owed the troll. There was an innate sense of honor that her society had built into her, and it's rules were clear. Perhaps some elves in her position might have reasoned that a troll was, indeed, the enemy. But in Meviahd's mind the cut was clean and precise. The troll had spared Devi Devi's life, Meviahd owed the troll on his behalf.

She caught up with the orc, still stepping gingerly amongst the dead bodies, and grasped the troll's other arm. She hefted it across her shoulders and took some of his weight. The orc gave her an approving look that might have been a smile had he not been so wounded.

They were walking in the direction the copse of trees that the orc had pointed out earlier. Why, Meviahd could not say. After all, he had just warned her of the harpies he believed to be there. But Meviahd let him lead the way anyways. She was too unsure of herself otherwise. They made steady progress, stepping carefully through the mud. The troll was heavier than his lean frame made him look, and the orc was weakened from blood loss.

They hit the base of the hills and began up the steep inclines, finding careful footing. Once Jandali groaned, his eyelids fluttering slightly. He turned to Meviahd blearily and whispered something in the native troll language.

"_Tet zoka Zuri?_"

When she did not respond he fell unconscious again, his head lolling.

Rounding a particularly large hill, they came upon a tiny cave entrance pocking it's grassy face. High plain brush grew up around it, and Meviahd would practically have to crawl to get in. The orc motioned frantically for her to enter it. He was scanning the skies with worry now. He crawled in clumsily after her, pulling Jandali with him. There was none of the orc's previous grace from the battle field. Just desperate bursts of strength.

He laid the troll's long body across the floor. The orc gasped as he did so. Little rivulets of blood ran over his chain link gloves and fell on Jandali's gaudy dreadlocks. All that blood, Meviahd couldn't believe all that blood had come from him...

"I could help you, maybe. I know a little first aid..." She trailed off. The orc didn't know what she was saying, but somehow he seemed to have guessed. He actually laughed, a dry sound that rasped from his throat, and shook his head. For a few more second he stood, waving back and forth wanly.

"Him good," he said finally, gesturing to the troll with a the same approving sort of look from earlier. "You help."

Meviahd nodded. After a seconds she remarked softly, "Thank you."

The orc nodded again, then ducked under the cave entrance and was gone.

Meviahd had sometimes heard of hunter's pets which, when it was their time, had wandered away from their masters in order to die in peace by themselves.

Hefting the troll back onto her shoulders by herself this time, Meviahd began to drag him further into the heart of the cave. They left a trail of blood behind them.

* * *

I actually thought this would be a short chapter, but it turned real long.... Whoops. After reading it several times I find that this chapter is a bit of a clunky ride, but I couldn't quite find a way to fix it. If anyone's got any suggestions it'd be great to hear them.

I've built up a head of steam with this, so I pretty much get the next chapter done by the time I've decided I'm safe on the first one. This should be updating quite frequently for a while.


	6. Chapter 6

Thanks again for the encouragement, guys. That's what motivates me to rip myself away from WoW (which belongs to Blizz) and write more of this.

Hope you enjoy.

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Jandali woke in short fits plagued with stabbing pain.

He felt like a man pulling from a sleep in a pool of cold water. Pumping his arms, trying desperately to rise to the surface. Every muscle was made up of separate strands of fire. For how long he stayed suspended like that, Jandali couldn't guess. Every time he awoke it seemed simultaneously as if both seconds and days had passed.

Finally there was a point where Jandali found himself truly waking. His senses were coming to, if not a bit weakly, and it felt like he might break the surface of the cruel cold water. The troll's eyelids flickered and he gasped a little, sucking in the air greedily.

The first things he saw were hazy shapes. Brown smudges with black accents became a rock ceiling, probably a cave, thrown into deep shadowed relief. When he turned his head, a glowing white haze of light became a small cooking fire. The troll flexed his fingers, testing to make sure they were still there. Then his toes. All present.

The troll couldn't remember what had happened. He'd been the leader of a band of orcs. But they'd had with them... An elf. And the Horse Hawk. But he'd flown away. Walking through the rain, Sentinels appearing through the fog. And the harpies. Jandali felt the same stab of pain lance through him, traveling from the left side of his waist and up through his body. He gasped silently, gritting his teeth together so hard his jaw began to ache.

The troll's eyes fluttered and he focused again, looking up now. The elf, Meviahd, was sitting across the fire from him. Her knees were pulled to her chest, her chin resting on them. The way her eyes were lidded and the hazy look in them told Jandali she was tired. She was looking off into the distance down what Jandali could see was the long, dark tunnel through which a slice of white light poured. Moonlight.

Meviahd hadn't noticed he was awake. She raised a hand to run it across the purple blossom of a bruise flowering in a line on her jaw. Ah, Jandali remembered the feeling of the back of his hand and knuckles connecting satisfyingly with the side of her face. A bruise from him. He licked his lips and braced his arms against the ground, preparing to sit up. When he tried, the pain was great enough to wrest a choked noise from him. Stars swam in his vision. He fell back onto the bed palette he had been sleeping on, moaning.

"Don't sit up," the troll felt Meviahd's cool hand rest against his forehead. He struggled a hand up to bat her away, peeling his lips back from his tusks and teeth like a wild animal.

"You have a fever." She said. His body was frozen but his head burned, and the elf's cool hand upon it felt like a thing of beauty. Still he pushed her off again, growling when he couldn't form his tongue around any sort of speech. The pain in his side became unbearable; there was a roaring in his ears.

He struggled against the inky darkness that filtered across his eyes without success. The troll blacked out again. The elf's voice and name faded from his mind.

______________

Jandali woke what he imagined to be a few hours later. The fire had been restocked and it's flames leapt higher, smoke curling into the dozens of natural chimneys on the ceiling above. Each was about the width of a coin and sucked the heat greedily. Still, the cave was quite a bit warmer since he'd last woken. But Jandali could feel his limbs shaking with an unforgiving cold that came from somewhere deep inside of him. He coughed, sending spasms through the wound at his side.

The elf's face loomed over him at once. He blinked, licking his lips and baring his teeth at her again. She gave him a decidedly unimpressed look.

"You're wounded. Badly. Try not to move." She turned away out of his vision, and he could hear her rustling through what was probably a nearby pack. Returning, she pressed something to his lips. Jandali tested it with his tongue, guessing it was some kind of root from the dry, rough texture and it's earthy smell. Still he did not take it in his mouth, barring the entrance with his clenched teeth. Meviahd snorted slightly.

"Hey, I didn't drag you all this way to poison you. I thought you were smarter than that." She spat, her voice laden with sarcasm. The elf leaned in a closer over him and her face became more stern. She had a rather feline visage, pulled with the high cheekbones and slightly upturned, almond shaped eyes of her race. Her full lips scowled at him.

"It's something I found in one of the orc's packs. I recognize it, it's a pain killer. And you need it. Otherwise you're not going to be able to sit up, and you should probably at least drink."

Reluctantly Jandali took the dry thing between his teeth. He chewed slowly, too afraid to move quickly in case the pain returned. Sitting up seemed entirely beyond him. The stabbing sensation from before was like no pain he'd ever felt. Scrapes and little scars, sure, but nothing such as this, and he didn't want to feel it again. He tried to remember where he'd gotten the wound.

"Am I going to die?" He demanded suddenly. His voice was harsh and raw, but he was happy to have it at all. Meviahd froze for a second where she was hovering over him. Then she shrugged.

"I'll be honest with you, I do not know. I am trying the best I can, but I'm no healer."

They fell silent, Meviahd moving to sit back across the fire from him. Jandali turned his head to the side so he could watch her. She pulled her knees to her chest once more, resting her chin wearily on her thin knees. Meviahd had a rogue's build, a thin, lithe body with long, lean muscles. She was perhaps short for an elf, though she might still be taller than a troll woman. Not that Jandali would compare her to a troll woman. Meviahd barely had breasts or hips, a skinny little stick woman with purple skin. The troll audibly snorted.

Perhaps taking the noise to be one of frustration, Meviahd said to him, "You can try to sit up now, if you want. There's a bed roll behind your head if you want to lean against it."

With the utmost of caution the troll began to raise himself. Meviahd offered him no help. His arms shook with the effort and pain jolted across his waist, but he managed to rest against the palette. It was wedged against a rock and, luckily, held his weight. His chest heaved with even the strain of just that.

"Where are my men?"

"There are none left." She replied without inflection to her voice.

Jandali sucked in a breath that filled his body like a winter wind. He licked his lips a little, finding that she had left a water skin by his side. Weakly he raised it to his lips, sucking greedily at it before speaking.

"Gar'thog, the third in command. The orc who gave you the bread and water. He was helping you carry me, I remember..."

"He is gone too." Something like sorrow tinged her voice. Jandali stared at her for a moment. His mind filled thickly like a viscous swamp water, pooling in the muddy foot print of his mind.

"All of my men are dead," he repeated. The wind blew out of him and left his body hollow. Guilt dealt him a crushing blow and the troll felt he could not intake his breath for a few seconds. Meviahd turned her head towards him and he saw that what he had mistakenly taken for a shadow was actually a black eye. He'd given her that too, he remembered.

Rage boiled through his blood, hot and quick. The hand he held the water skin in began to shake. Roaring, Jandali launched the skin at the elf. It missed her by a few inches; Meviahd startled and jumped when she saw it aimed for her. The thing bounced off the cave wall behind her, splattering water on to the stone there. The fire hissed where droplets had hit it.

"Why?" Jandali demanded, "Why do this to me? Why drag me from the battlefield where I would be honored to die among the men I commanded? Damn you, Meh-vee-ahd Moonweaver."

His waist was aflame. Jandali sucked in a desperately needed breath, his teeth set. Anger still broiled in the pit of his stomach, but all he could do was pant.

"It was on my honor." Carefully, Meviahd moved to pick up the water skin. She checked it over calmly, fastening it's lid once more and laying it to the side. Sitting up now, Jandali could see that she had more than one pack by her side, some orcish, some elven. Laying next to them, within arm's reach for the elf, was the goblins' bronze blunderbuss.

"I owed you a debt. Devi Devi's life for your own. I could not leave it unpaid as much as I could not willingly choose to stain my honor."

"Damn your honor," Jandali replied immediately. He was looking down at his waist now, gauging the amount of blood seeping through the bandages that were tightly circled there. Meviahd had removed his leather shirt and the kilt he wore, leaving him only with his leather pants. The bandages were low on his torso. Round, wide spots of dark blood stained the middle of them.

"I'll leave if you want. You'll be dead within days. But I will if it is what you wish."

Swallowing, the shaman turned to regard her again. She was serious, he could see it in her face. The blue light of her eyes lit the severe line of the full lips. Jandali hesitated, his mouth open slightly. The pain from his wound throbbed through him again.

"No," he said finally, in a low voice. His tongue tingled with the shame of saying it. "Don't."

Meviahd just nodded. Jandali was almost surprised by her discretion. From the barb-tongued elf he had expected something biting and sarcastic. Instead she sighed, standing and dusting off her leggings, though they had nothing on them. Jandali noticed that she had removed her leather chest piece and the feathered shoulder pads she'd been wearing upon her capture. The shirt she was in now was a simple white linen undershirt, ripped on the bottom enough for Jandali to be able to see the faint muscle lines on her stomach. The linen must have been used for the bandages the troll wore now.

"How long have I been out?"

"Three days," the elf said matter-of-factly, pulling some bandages from a pack, "And a day since you last woke; I was beginning to get ready to leave. I've been giving you water as best I could, but really you should have more. And your bandages should be changed. Lean backwards a bit, slowly now."

She was all business. The elf moved to kneel by his side, handing him the water skin again and urging him to drink. A bit shell shocked, Jandali did so, slower this time. The water cleared his throat and moistened his dry mouth. Almost breaking her stoic demeanor, Meviahd leaned over him uneasily and untied the bandages from his front. She had to pass them behind his back to do so, and was careful to avoid allowing her arm to touch him. Jandali snorted again, snapping.

"Come on girlie, stop your blushing and just do it already."

"Shut up," Meviahd replied evenly. She pulled back the last of the bandages and revealed his wound. The puckered, shredded mouth of it spat forth a gush of dark, clotted blood followed by some brighter, and more ruddy. The wound was grievously deep. Seeing it made Jandali feel ill.

"How did you ever manage while I was asleep?" He asked, pacified now. He was too morbidly involved with the thought of a wound so gruesome being something on his body. It became almost numb, far away. The troll was snapped back to attention when the elf pulled forth a salve and began to spread it on the gash. Jandali hissed.

"It was hard work. I ran out of the bandages I salvaged from the packs on the second day, you were bleeding so much. Have to use my shirt now. This salve came from one of your shamans, and I recognize the smell, but I do not know what good it will do." She was re-bandaging him now, passing the linen behind his back and around his waist. To do so she had to crouch awkwardly against him. The troll sneered, but said nothing. After a moment of silence his heart gave a painful twinge.

"You are sure they are all dead?"

"I've been scrounging food and supplies from the battle field for three days since. I'm... sorry. They're all gone." As if to quickly jump from the painful subject Meviahd continued, "In order to leave the cave I must be stealthed. There are harpies in the trees above, and they attack all that live and move on the ground below. They're crazed. I watched them make short work of a hyena that happened under their trees."

"Did you see the... sores on them? The harpies?" Struck with the sudden memory, Jandali momentarily forgot his bitterness. "I remember when I cut that one down. Where it fell I could see that it's face was covered in these red little marks, I don't know. Lesions."

"They're all over them," Meviahd affirmed. She tied the last of his bandages off tightly. Jandali could feel that even the new bandages were a drastic improvement. Cautiously he filled his lungs, feeling the salve beginning to work in preventing him pain.

"I do not know what they are," the elf continued, pulling a pack closer to her and offering him a handful of jerky that he began to pick at. Jandali found the meat to be surprisingly unappetizing, especially if it was true that he hadn't eaten for three days. He was rather nauseous, in fact. The shaman concentrated on Meviahd's words instead, trying to ignore the feeling.

"Some blight seems to have taken them. They are completely mad. If it were not for the orc you spoke of, I'm sure it would have taken them only a short amount of time before the found us again. I've no idea how he knew to look for this cave. Led me right to it without a second thought."

"His family used to have a pig farm out here when he grew up. Probably knew these cliffs up and down." Jandali responded, his voice heavy with guilt. If Meviahd caught on to it she said nothing, moving once more to sit across the fire from him. Despite her insistence to help him, the elf seemed loathe to even touch him.

"So what do we do now?" Jandali asked finally.

"I will stay until you are well enough to walk the path to one of your towns. The Crossroads, perhaps. Until then I will hunt for us, and tend to your wounds. But when you can make that journey, I wash my hands of you. I will return to my people and never speak of you." As if trying to retain something like dark humor, Meviahd added, "Or I will do all those things until you die, in which case I will return to my people and never speak of you."

"Fair enough." Jandali struggled to lay down again. He could feel sleep coming, throwing it's black net to entangle him. For a second he panicked; what if he didn't wake up again? But something calm and collected gathered his mind. If he did not awaken again, so be it. If he did live, then he hoped his recovery was a speedy one. He didn't think he could stomach much of the sharp-tongued elf.

________________

Ho hum, a transition chapter in my opinion. I love writing dialogue, but I'm actually way more psyched for the next chapter than I should be, and I desperately want to get there.

As always, if you liked it, leave a review!


	7. Chapter 7, Part 1

This chapter is so long. I tried to cut things out, but everything seemed integral to some part of it. Hopefully the length isn't a pain in the ass. I feel like this is an important chapter, some of them might just be longer. What I'm going to do is upload it in two pieces, both from Meviahd's point of view. There's just no way this next bit could be told in anything but her voice, and I'd like to keep it in bite size chunks for you guys. So not long after I upload this, I'll do the next one as well.

Also, sixteen people have added this to their favorite/alert list? Well, I'll be. Shucks guys .

((WoW belongs to Blizz.))

* * *

Meviahd was first impatient to be free of him.

Two days had passed since the troll had truly awoken. Since then he'd slept almost eighteen hour a day. Sometimes he tossed and turned in a fitful, feverish sleep. Sometimes his sleep was a peaceful one, and he would whisper softly in his native language. When he was awake he was unfriendly, almost outwardly harsh.

He had taken to reminding her that she was a traitor, turning against her own people to save him. In some ways Meviahd almost felt sorry for him. Jandali could not demand that she leave him: he didn't have the strength of resolve to command his own death. Perhaps he felt that he could drive her away. Force her to leave so that he could be alone to wither away in peace, with his honor intact. And she would have left it to him. But he had not given the command yet, so Meviahd continued to return to the cave to tend to him. It was on her honor.

Meviahd paused in the tall Barrens brush, crouching lower to the earth and shifting her daggers in her hands. She'd rescued them off of the body of an orc on the battlefield and was happy to hold the familiar blades in her hands once more. Her quarry was a Plainstrider, one of the tall, sturdy bi-pedal birds that roamed the grasses. They were not usually hard kills, but the Plainstriders of the northern Barrens were particularly vicious. She was also being careful; her leather armor still stunk too much of vomit to wear, and she hadn't had the set of mind yet to search the dead elf bodies for new armor. She hunted only in her linen shirt and leather pants, careful to make surprise attacks.

Earlier, Meviahd had managed to get a good gouge out of one of the huge birds with her daggers, but the beast had fled. She'd been tracking it's blood trail for a good hour, following the steadily weakening creature. It was close to it's time now.

The rogue melded into the shadows, feeling herself become imperceptible. She crept forwards almost noiselessly and positioned herself behind the huge bird, ready to drive a blade between it's shoulders. Waiting, the right moment presented itself, and Meviahd raised her right hand to plunge it down.

A human materialized from nothing, appearing in front of the Plainstrider. The bird startled, screeching and making as if to move backwards. In a second the human was upon it. He lashed out with twin daggers of his own and slit the beast's throat. Blood poured freely from the Plainstrider, and the creature fell dead in the dust at the human's feet.

"That was my kill," without thinking, Meviahd revealed herself, letting the shadows drop away from her body.

The human didn't seem all that surprised to see her. In fact, he gave her a lascivious wink, looking her body up and down slowly. Meviahd shifted uncomfortably, but her annoyance at losing the Plainstrider still kept her mind.

He was a scruffy looking human, tall for one of his kind, but built leanly. Like a ropey-muscled wolf. Another rogue, obviously, the human shared Meviahd's careful way of moving. But his was a blunter, more powerful seeming subtlety that put Meviahd almost automatically on the alert. His hair was a brownish-red, pulled away from his face in a long ponytail. The armor he wore was all black leather. He grinned at her, bearing white, tombstone teeth.

"Well now sweetheart, sorry 'bout that. But look, certainly there's more than enough for my men and I. You're welcome to join us if you want."

"No," Meviahd responded immediately. She kneeled down by the bird and pulled a skinning knife from her waist, peeling the Plainstrider's feathered hide back from it's thick haunch. She began to cut the warm meat away from the bone, trying her best to ignore the look on the human's face.

"I have somewhere to be," the elf continued, piling enough meat for her and Jandali for the night into a bag she'd been carrying, "So if it's all the same to you, I'll just take a little for myself. You _did_ say there was enough."

"Are you a traveler?"

"Yes," Meviahd was choosing her words carefully. Slowly, and as comfortably as possible. The rogue was too nosy for her liking, "I'm going down to Ratchet to catch the boat to Stranglethorn."

"Now why would a lovely lady such as yourself want to go there? All by your lonesome? Hell, the Barrens here is crawling with Horde scum. Maybe you want an escort? I'd be happy to help you."

"No," Meviahd repeated. She stood and pulled the draw string on the bag tight, still speaking with her fake careless attitude, "I'm fine by myself, thank you. You and your men travel well."

Without another word she began to head off in the direction she imagined Ratchet to be instead of towards the cave. The skin on her back prickled with what she fancied was the feeling of the human staring after her, but she did not turn around to see for a long while. When she finally felt it safe to look back the human had virtually disappeared. All she could see was the corpse of the Plainstrider bloating under the hot sun.

Eventually she changed her direction, making her way back towards the cave. Every so often she stopped to scan the cloudless skies. She was looking for Devi Devi, but he was yet to appear. Worry gnawed at her heart like a pitiless, tireless thing, but Meviahd still had hope.

She had to stealth once more to enter the area around the cave. The harpies were still a prevalent threat, attacking even the smallest creature that came within a certain range of their tree. The bodies of her fallen comrades and her captors sent an awful stench onto the wind, and they were a horror to look at. The usual scavengers, which would have picked their bones clean, had been driven away.

When Meviahd returned to the fire side, Jandali was standing, peering closely at the wall near his bed palette. The racial rejuvenation powers of the trolls meant that his wound was closing faster than a human's might, but it was still a long process.

"You are not supposed to be standing." Meviahd growled, throwing the sack of meat down on the cave floor next to a wide stone she'd been using as a cutting board.

"I'm not," the troll replied absently. He ran his hand over the cave wall, remarking, "Have you seen the writing here? There are things painted on these walls. They be too faded for me to read them, but..."

"There's more of them," Meviahd jerked her thumb towards the long tunnel of the cave that continued past the area they slept in. "I walked down it for a few minutes the first night we were here to make sure nothing unpleasant was hiding there, but it goes on forever. But there's more pictures and-"

"Why did you not tell me?" The troll began to make his way slowly into the cave. He walked with a limp; any sort of movement was an arduous and painful process for him. Sighing, Meviahd stood to follow him, grabbing a lit branch from the fire before she did.

"Because you were busy dying. I figured you didn't have the time. Were you going to come down here without any light? A lot you're going to read in the dark."

"Hush. Always snapping at me, girlie. Your mouth neva' stop moving." The troll was in a good mood; he hadn't begun to accuse her of treachery yet. Meviahd caught up with him and held the flickering torch to the wall so they could see. Once they'd walked about five minutes into the long cavern images began to appear. Crude, black, white, and red marking that sometimes seemed to be an alphabet, and at other times looked more like tiny pictures. Illustrations of long and lean forms ran up and down the cave walls. At one point Meviahd stopped so they could both fully inspect an image larger than her head. It was a troll's face, covered in ritualistic markings, and from it's mouth spilled hieroglyphs of trees, plants, and animals, all falling into a cylindrical stone form.

"A moon well." Meviahd said quietly. She drew the torch across the cave wall and found more glyphs: thin little figures with long ears. Blue and amber paint around their eyes made them glowing.

"There is writing here," Jandali reached out to take the torch from her, holding it to a large panel of wall covered entirely in a script Meviahd had never seen before in her life. The troll leaned in close to it, his face adopting a more serene, introspective visage than the scowl Meviahd had come to expect of him. He looked scholarly as any of her people hunched over a writing desk.

"_Shu'halo," _Jandali announced, stretching one of his long fingers to place it over one of the painted words. He had rather thin fingers for a troll. "This is the word the Tauren use to name themselves. This is _taur-ahe_, though different than I have ever seen."

"You know their language, too?"

"I am _the_ Jandali amongst my people. My name means 'many languages'." He was only half speaking to her. The rest of his mind was elsewhere, trying to decipher the ancient language on the stone wall. "The troll shaman always keep a Jandali to understand the tongues of the people around us. To be ignorant of them is to be ignorant of a piece of the world around us, and we not want to be missin' even a small piece."

The beginning had sounded almost like a mantra he'd memorized. The end of was quiet, more heartfelt. He fell silent afterwards, his nose so close to the stone it seemed to touch it.

"So they declared it from your birth?" Meviahd asked after a moment. She found herself suddenly curious. This was a world she had heard was only full of savages barely capable of speech, certainly not of social custom or culture.

"Huh? Oh, no. They found I had a skill for it when I was little, and they train me."

Thinking for a moment, Meviahd asked, "What was your name before it was Jandali?"

"_Tah'zir_," Jandali's mouth curled and before she could ask, he translated, "Long nose."

"Huh, if _trolls_ call you Long Nose..."

Jandali pulled his lips back and bared his teeth at her. Maviahd did the same to him. The troll laughed suddenly, shaking his head and turning back to the cave wall. For a while he was quiet and the studious look returned to his face. Meviahd sat on the ground next to him for lack of a better thing to do, staring up at the images of the night elves running across the wall.

"You know what this be?" Jandali asked, his voice breaking the silence with something like awe. Hesitation tinged his words, then he continued with more strength, "The writing is a little rough in places, some it missing. There a few words here and there I don't know but... It is an account of the night elves. When they were born into this world."

He cleared his throat and began to read from the wall, his hand hovering over the words, "'The people of the...' Well it's a bit hard, but I _believe _this symbol means troll. It's kind of like a combination of 'tusk' and 'warrior' but... So, 'The trolls entered the... water...' Here they got this symbol for their goddess, Mu'sha, the moon goddess. Some say that is your Elune. But it say, 'They became of a different people, with eyes that glowed like the eye of the Earthmother, faces fair and transformed. They turned upon those that had been their own and were a different people-.' Do you know how old this be, if it real? The tauren only allowed their shaman to write long, long ago. I only know the language after studying with one of their druids. And here there be so many different symbols, down towards the end I have no idea-"

"You're telling me this is when my people... We.... We were not _trolls._" Meviahd spat the last word from her mouth as if it had bitten her tongue, "We are the creations of Elune, modeled after Elune herself."

Jandali didn't say anything. He was inspecting his three-fingered hands, then looking at Meviahd's.

"You don't believe it, do you?" She demanded.

"I do not know. Could be a fake, could be a lie. I would need more time to inspect it, bring people who know more."

"Come on," Meviahd said, standing quickly and grabbing the torch from him. She marched back towards the fire, her back ramrod straight. "We should start dinner. I'm tired."

Jandali followed behind her still limping, but she did not slow for him. They settled back down around the fire, both on either side of it like warring factions positioned across the dead zone of a battleground. Meviahd began to cut the Plainstrider meat with her skinning knife. She speared thick chunks of it to roast over the fire. The only sound in the cave was the juices of it hissing as they dripped into the flames.

"You know what bother me?" Jandali asked, his voice introspective, but haunted. It was the hollow tone he used whenever the group of orcs he'd commanded was brought into the conversation. Meviahd knew he felt responsible for their loss.

"What bother me is, when the bird women came down, didn't matter that they had a common enemy. They were animals, you know? Creatures still pitted against each other because they were of a different breed. If they had just fought the bird women instead of each other, some might be livin'. It was Horde versus Alliance, and it was all they could see, they bloodlust. What if we were the same people, it make no difference now. Too much blood between us."

Meviahd said nothing for a moment, then, "What will you go home to, Jandali? Do you have a mate, brothers, sisters... Children?"

Jandali laughed in the sudden, surprised way he sometimes did. It was a chuckle that reverberated deep in the back of his throat. "No, I go home to my books and my studies. What do you go home to, Meviahd Moonweaver, when you go back to your people and not speak of me again?"

"Sisters, that's all. And Devi Devi. I hope." As if to change the subject, she allowed, "My mother died a few days before you captured me."

"Oh." Jandali distracted himself by pulling meat off of the sticks over the fire, "Your Horse Hawk was not with the Sentinels. Maybe you worry but, I figured him a strong, cleaver beastie. He was free, and he was coming back for you. I think little could stop him."

"Yeah, maybe."

Silence reigned again, lasting all through their meal. Meviahd was lost in her own thoughts of her sisters, Devi Devi, and the hazy blue forests of Darnassus: home. The troll seemed far away in his own mind as well, though Meviahd suspected he was thinking of the writings on the cave wall. She didn't doubt he'd have stayed there deciphering them all night, had it not been that he could not stay standing or sitting for long.

She allowed the troll to curl up for bed first. They alternated watches, but it was often Meviahd who stayed awake most of the night. Sleep would too easily plague the healing troll. That night, Meviahd made sure he was out cold, then she crept up closer to him. She was scrutinizing his face, trying to find something elven in those angular, wood-carved features. Here was the enemy, sleeping soundly next to her fire.

The elf looked up and caught the glint of the bronze blunderbuss behind a few of the packs piled in the corner. She slipped away from the troll again, pushing the pacs on top of the gun more. Hiding it.

Meviahd had kept it close at hand for the first few days, certain the troll would wish to cause her harm. But it seemed unnecessary now, almost insulting. The troll was many things, but she didn't fear him much now.

__________________

D: Phew. Like I said, this was part one of this installment, and definitely needs part two to tie up all it's loose ends. I tell you, I like part two :|

As always, review if you've got comments. I love, love, love to read them. The little e-mail alerts brighten my day.


	8. Chapter 7, Part 2

Another long one, this. Clears up loose ends, hopefully. And of course, the next chapter will be the switched perspective again.

Anyways, soon more questions like 'why the humans were in the Barrens in the first place' (from Foos) will be answered. Later chapters give more backstory on that, but I couldn't fit the answers in just yet. I did change the earlier chapter to be clearer on the human rogue. He was actually offering Meviahd to travel with him _and_ his men, but I worded it strangely. Hopefully it's fixed now. As for the Tauren, lore states that they were born when the Night Elves were (not from the well). Though for both of them there's some shaky timelines. Blizz hasn't specified too much.

Well, read and enjoy I guess?

(WoW belongs to Blizz and such...)

* * *

Meviahd no longer felt the urgency to return home.

She discovered it only two mornings after the troll and she had read the cave walls. Before, she had waited by the sick troll as he burned with fever, urging him to draw his last breath so they could both be free. She had longed to suck in a lungful of the green-blue air of Darnassus. Now the only bit of home she missed was Devi Devi, and she had not given up on him yet.

That morning she felt none of her previous urgency. She found herself content enough to stand on the golden plains of the Barrens and breath their dry air. It wasn't necessarily the setting or the atmosphere, but rather the freedom. There were no cultural stigmas, no customs she had to adhere to. No one comparing her to her sisters or her mother. There was only Meviahd's plans, and what she would make of the day.

That morning she was treading her way back to the cave, a gazelle slung over her shoulder. So far she had been avoiding their population, knowing the taint of disease that had been a prevalent threat for years. But hunting had been sparse that day, and the gazelle would have to do.

There was a hyena picking at the elf and orc carcasses in front of the cave. Meviahd stopped, watching it closely. Waiting. Minutes passed and the harpies did not come. The air was vacant of their ferocious cries, and the sky was clear. The hyena continued it's grotesque feast unmolested.

The elf began to measure her breathing, rationing it out. Ten seconds in, ten seconds out... The shadows took both her and the gazelle, after enough concentration, and she began to creep up the steep hills.

The harpies' tree was empty. It's branches were bared, stripped both of the leaves that grew from them and the harpies that roosted there. All that was left were the empty tangled nests of the creatures that hung from the branches like dirty sacs. On the ground around the great tree's base were the harpies' bodies. They were as twisted and gnarled as the roots that they lay strewn upon. Meviahd inched forwards, afraid they might still be alive. She was staring into the face of one of the harpies. It's open mouth screamed silently at the hot sun, and fat bluebottle flies trundled over it's dry tongue.

All of the harpies were covered in the same sores from before, perhaps even more of them now. Meviahd backed away from them. She had no desire to inspect them closer, diseased as they were. Shifting the corpse of the little gazelle on her shoulder, she made her way down the hill again.

Jandali had more active the past few days. He spent most of his time inspecting the walls of the cave. Meviahd had found his pack in the wreckage, and he was set on taking notes in a little vellum booklet he had been carrying with him. Curious, she'd hovered over his shoulder a few times to see his carefully copied glyphs. Despite his huge hands, he was remarkably delicate with the little sticks of charcoal he used to write.

He also made for interesting fireside conversation. When he was in a good humor they spoke to each other as if there were no differences between them. Jandali was so sudden to swing between moods, unpredictable, but Meviahd could usually coax one of his rough laughs from him. She was eager to tell him of the harpies to see what he would make of it.

At the path through the hills Meviahd stopped, a noise catching her long ears. Something wasn't right. At the mouth of the cave Meviahd listened intently. Yes, there it was. A voice too high to be the troll's. Someone else inside made a barking noise, raw with pain.

Carfully, she placed the body of the gazelle on some nearby rocks. Meviahd calmed her breath, in ten, out ten, and felt the deep shadows around the cave mouth blanket her. Her muscles were live and twitching with apprehension, but she steeled herself to creep silently forward.

"Well there ya are, sweet heart." A gruff voice made the elf jump; her heart hammered in her chest. Strong hands seized her shoulders and pulled her backwards. One moved to hold the dull edge of a cold blade to her throat.

"You tailed me," Meviahd hissed, recognizing the voice at once. The human rogue from the Plainstrider kill. She heard him laugh behind her, and the one hand he still held her shoulder with squeezed.

"And would you guess what we found." He shoved her forwards deeper into the cave.

The cooking fire was still lit, but was guttering lower. A white ball of magelight floated lazily above the cave now. Their bed palettes were still spread on the floor, though they'd been kicked aside haphazardly. On the side of the cave stood two more humans. They were both well-muscled men in their prime. Mail-wearing, with faces that seemed dour on first glance, but were actually lopsided with jeering smiles. Between then they held Jandali bent forwards at the waist over one of the rocks that jutted from the cave side. Each had an arm apiece, and one of the men had grabbed a fistful of his gaudy dreads and was grinding the troll's chin against the rock.

There was little left of the intelligent, well-learned Jandali that Meviahd knew. She could see that he was all animal reaction, all survival instinct and violence and terror. His half-red eyes darted around in his head. He was really bearing his teeth now. So much so that Meviahd realized they were slightly hand-sharpened. His struggles had reopened the wound on his hip. The bandage on his bare waist was entirely soaked, and blood ran freely down his leg to pool at his feet.

"Stop," Meviahd felt bile rise into the back of her throat, "Stop it, what are you doing?"

The two men looked up, their faces remarkably nonchalant. One of them scanned Meviahd over and, with laughter tinging his voice, remarked, "Your's is easier on the eyes, Antwon. Want to trade?"

"Stop it," Meviahd commanded again, but her voice lacked authority. It was small, like a child's voice attempting to confront the village bully.

The last man, the one who had not spoken yet, said, "You would defend this beast?"

"He's wounded," she said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. They shrugged and turned their backs on her, considering the troll. Meviahd felt suddenly stricken with helplessness. She began to push away from the man holding her. He flipped his dagger so that the sharp side rested against the thin skin at her throat now.

"Come on, sweet heart. Just stay here with me awhile." The rogue, Antwon, said. His voice was husky now, and he moved his hand to pull a little at the strap of her white linen shirt. Meviahd grimaced, disgust washing over her.

One of the men holding Jandali was saying, "Do you still have that little firewood saw? Here, I'll hold 'im. Go grab it."

The other man moved to unstrap a little leather case hanging off of a pack near his feet. From it he removed a small bow saw with a blade spotted with rust. "I've always wanted a couple to put on my mantle. They used to give you bounty on them back when my grandfather was around."

In her ear, the rogue whispered, "You an' me could go outside by ourselves, y'know."

Meviahd's blood ran with ice water. One of the men took the saw and rested it on top of one of Jandali's tusks. The troll panicked, panting and squirming in his captor's grasp. They laughed, and the man holding his hair pressed his head more firmly to the rocks underneath him.

"Lively thing, ain't he?"

They were toying with him. Something sickened and sad woke in Meviahd, and it began to eat her heart from the inside out. The men's faces seemed lit with an other-worldy, demonic light. Their open, laughing mouths stretched their faces in two. Meviahd pushed against the man holding her in earnest, hyper-aware of the steel brushing at her jugular.

One of the humans began to drag the saw back and forth over Jandali's tusk. The sound of it was terrible, a grinding noise only made more grotesque by the knowledge of it's source. At first the troll seemed intent on staying quiet. He kept stoney faced and soundless. But as the blade bit deeper, Meviahd could see him crumbling. The mask he wore broke and his face pulled in anguish. Every back and forth of the saw was soon accompanied by his noises of pain, first little gasps, then full drawn out moans.

Time seemed to draw out like a spool unwinding. Meviahd could feel her heartbeat rattling her collar bones. The sense of powerlessness she'd had earlier multiplied tenfold. The blade reached somewhere about a third into Jandali's tusk and hit pulp and veins, mixing bone dust and blood into a paste that dripped thickly down the troll's face. The saw slid wetly.

The troll started to curse in his own tongue. Zandali swears turned to wordless yells consisting purely of the sound of pain. When the saw reached the middle of his tusk, the Jandali began to sob. They were desperate, hysteric noises that wrenched Meviahd by the strings of her heart. He pleaded with them in Common, begging them to stop, but the humans ignored him.

"You don' have to see this," Antwon was whispering, "We could go somewhere else, you an' me." His tongue flicked out across her ear.

For a moment Meviahd _was_ somewhere else. Inside of herself, she was far away from Jandali's broken calls for mercy. She was far away from the rogue's hand, now creeping up under the hem of her shirt. She was in another place. But something else in her snapped, and it was something that was hellbent on survival.

The elf arched her back suddenly, pressing herself against the Antwon's chest. The human made a small pleased noise and began to pull her back towards the cave entrance. She felt him lean forward, beginning to whisper into her ear.

Meviahd jerked her head back to crack off of his nose. It crunched under her skull. Meviahd's head, still tender, rang with pain. But it was worth it. Antwon let forth a strangled yell, the dagger falling from his grasp as both his hands flew to his nose.

Time was of the essence. As if it were an instinctual response built in over centuries, Meviahd dove for the packs she had pushed to the side of the cave just a few days before. Tossing them left and right, the elf closed her hands over smooth metal. A chill ran up her spine.

Meviahd swung the blunderbuss around and cocked it all in one fluid motion. Her muscles were gliding like liquid. Quicksilver and easy. She pulled the trigger and blew a fist-sized hole through Antwon's chest, right underneath the dip where his shoulder met his neck.

He cried wetly and fell to the ground, arms and legs jolting in spasms.

Her breath hitched. Meviahd spun to face the two remaining humans. They were gaping at her, faces and bodies slack. It had all happened so fast, it was as if it hadn't happened at all. But Antwon was still making bubbling, bloody noises, and his thrashing was slowing to a stop.

Meviahd's couldn't control her jagged, staccato breathing.

"Let him go," she finally commanded. Her voice sounded like rolling chips of rock. When they didn't move she gestured at them violently with the gun, saying louder, "I said let'im go."

Jandali was staring at her with eyes empty of recognition. They'd managed to saw all the way through his tusk and left him with a stump cut close to his lip. It was bleeding thickly.

One of the remaining men, the one holding Jandali's head down, let his fingers loose. He raised both of his hands and began to twist his fingers, filling them with magic. Meviahd laughed in a way that sounded more crazed than brave. She reached out a quivering hand and pulled at the hammer to lock it in place.

"Go ahead, try something." The blunderbuss rattled, it shook so much, but Meviahd's voice was level and icy, "Maybe you'll get me, but I'll take at least one of you."

They were all frozen for a long moment, the mage still gathering blue sparks into his hands, the other human holding Jandali's arms tight behind him. The troll just stared, his chest rising jaggedly, his face growing paler by the second.

"Walk out now, and you live." Meviahd said.

The mage hesitated, then let his magic dissipate slightly. The white ball of light hovering above him ceased. The other human let go of Jandali's hands. Without anything holding him up, the troll could not support himself against the rock. Jandali's knees buckled and he slid down it's side, twisting to face his attackers. The stones around his were smeared with red.

Never turning their backs to her, the humans side-stepped slowly around the outer rim of the cave. The mage still held a bit of a spell in his palms, and the other man still gripped the hilt of his sword, but no one moved to attack. The man with the sword stopped to pull Antwon's arm up around his shoulder, lifting his limp body. The human rogue did not stir, and no breath moved across his dry lips.

"You will remember me," the mage told Meviahd, his voice grave, "This man was my brother, and you killed him for the sake of that beast. I will tell your people what you have done."

He didn't know her name, but he knew her face. It might be enough. Still, Meviahd bared her teeth at him, saying, "Do what you will."

"Then remember well the name Marcus Fletchett. It will be your end."

Meviahd said nothing, staring straight down the long barrel of the blunderbuss. It shook violently in her grip, but she didn't lower it. The humans backed out of the cave mouth, disappearing around the bend in the stone. For a long after she could no longer see them, Meviahd stood, still aiming the gun.

A noise, something skittering across the dirt floor, startled her to turning away. Jandali, practically crawling, scrambled across the floor. He was crouched low, and their was something uncomprehending in his face. Meviahd lowered the gun, placing it on the ground beside her and walking towards him. Slowly, calmly, like you might with an injured animal.

"It's me, Jandali. It's alright, it's just me. Meviahd."

His tusk was bleeding badly now. It dribbled down his chin and the pale skin of his neck.

"That needs to be stopped, too. Cauterized, maybe. I can help." Her voice was low and soothing. Jandali snapped something in Zandali at her. He was moving strangely, perhaps trying to stand, but the re-opened wound on his hip wasn't allowing it. The whites of his eyes were scarlet.

"I can help," Meviah repeated. She risked a step forwards and help her hand out. The troll swatted it away, showing her his sharpened teeth. After a second's hesitation, Meviahd did the same to him, pulling her lips back.

Jandali blinked, still as a statue for a moment. Then, very quietly, his speech rounded from the pain in his jaw, he spoke.

"I told them I not want any trouble."

"I know," Meviahd replied evenly, inching forwards. She was crouching now. "I know you didn't want trouble."

"I told them, just leave alone. No trouble." He spat blood.

"I know."

Meviahd reached her hand out again. The troll smashed it away with sudden ferocity.

"Don't touch my fucking face!" He roared, chest heaving, "Nobody... Nobody is going to touching me.. Leaving me alone..."

Leaning backwards on the balls of her feet, Meviahd tried to think. Her fingers quivered where she placed them over her knees, and her heart still beat a tattoo against her ribcage. But she had to think. It could be days, it could be hours, but she didn't doubt the humans would be back. With friends. She and Jandali could not stay in the cave, but the troll was in little condition to travel. His wounds needed real attention.

Meviahd reached out to close her hands over something half-covered by dirt. She pulled it to her, brushing the sand and grit off. It was his little notebook: all of his careful notes written in ink, his drawings in charcoal, his observations. She offered it to him delicately, holding it at arm's length.

"This is you," she told him quietly, "Maybe I don't know you that well, but this is what you are. You're smarter than you're acting right now. Think about it. We both know we need to leave. Please, I'll help you. You just need to let me."

Jandali stared at her until his eyes whitened. They were bloodshot and still pearly pink, but behind them she could see him returning. After a while he took the little notebook from her. Blood from his tusk dripped down onto it, and the troll looked momentarily surprised. He reached up to touch his fingers gingerly against the hacked stub. Jandali's face hardened.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Yeah," Meviahd turned her head, seeing his tusk gleaming ivory and sickly on the rough stone, "Me too."

____________

Phew, meant to get that out earlier, but I got sick D:


	9. Chapter 8

So, woah? Tons and _tons _of new watchers and commenters. You guys totally make my day! When I get e-mail updates of reviews I am so excited, let me tell you. Nice to have more people, and hopefully you continue to enjoy reading this.

These chapters keep getting longer, but the feedback you guys have been giving me seems to suggest that's not a bad thing? I don't mind writing to long chapters, so if you're all up to it, I'll keep doing it. I always find a ton of stuff (mostly little conversations) I want to add in, so it's no problem to me.

Also, y'all might want to stop by Fallacy's deviantart, where she's done a couple awesome fanarts for Gunmouth. You can find them at: http://korinacaffeine(dot)deviantart(dot)com

I'm actually working on a painting myself, so whenever I get that done, I'll link it. When I'm not writing fanfiction or playing WoW, I'm an illustration major at a fine arts college.

Anyways, this is a rather long chapter. Hope you enjoy!

((And WoW belongs to Blizz, of course.))

* * *

Jandali felt grateful for the hard stones under his feet, and for the aches in his waist and jaw.

It seemed strange to relish in them. The pain had been excruciating; every step tore a little more at the healing scabs from his recently opened wound. The pain in his tusk traveled down his jaw and made him so nauseous that he and Meviahd often had to pause, Jandali kneeling on the dusty ground and retching until nothing more would come. But it was raw and it was real. He was alive.

Jandali had never been so close to death. Not as close as he'd been, bent over the reddened rocks, tasting the coppery blood and the fear in his mouth. Even the pain the reverberating through him was welcome: it meant he still drawing breath.

They'd been walking for two days, making sparse camps under the dark trees and trading watches in the night. They were always on the lookout, always tense with the hunted feeling of prey. If the lionesses weren't enough, the threat of Alliance members was always present. Once, Jandali spotted a pair of humanoids far, far in the distance. It was impossible to tell what race they were, but Jandali and Meviahd still crouched side by side for a long time, waiting for them to pass around the circumference of one of the Barrens' hills.

"Maybe they were trolls. Maybe they were elves. I couldn't tell," Meviahd had said quietly, standing and brushing herself off. She offered a hand to Jandali; standing was hard for him. He took it without comment, swallowing despite the ache in his jaw.

That night they made camp in a copse of high bushes. Their mostly meal consisted of the dried meat they'd found in one of the packs the humans had left behind. There was no time for Meviahd to hunt; they were constantly on the move. Even when he stopped to rest, the troll felt the strain of pausing.

"We are headed nowhere," Meviahd said, gathering her knees to her chest and placing her chin on them. She always sat like that, curled up and closed in on herself. They had lit a small fire, unsuspicious due to the large amount of Barrens travelers, and in the light of it Jandali could see her face pull into a frown.

"We are headed away," He responded. It was true, they hadn't set a destination yet. Once, Meviahd had offered to guide him to the Crossroads and leave him there. But Jandali had simply turned it down, and they had not brought it up again. Something there was too fragile to yet be spoken of. Instead, they'd directed themselves further in towards the middle of the Barrens, hugging the hills towards the edge of the Stonetalon Mountains.

"We cannot wander here forever. And you still need someone who actually knows how to heal you."

They'd cauterized the bleeding vein in his tusk with a heated dagger. Jandali winced to remember the smell of searing flesh, the feeling of his wound burning shut. He had taken his tusk with him, wrapped in a scrap of cloth, but felt too sick to look at it yet. Meviahd carried it in the pack they'd brought with them, one of the human ones with little blood on it.

Perhaps catching the look on his face, Meviahd began to dig around in the knapsack. She pulled forth a dried root, leaning to hand it to him.

"This is the last one in here, I think."

Jandali hesitated. He might regret the decision tomorrow when the strain of travel would make his head spin. But the way he felt now, he didn't think he could sleep. The troll reached out and took it from her, popping the dry thing into his mouth and chewing gingerly. Numbness began to spread over him like a cool spring rain.

"They've got all kinds of junk in here. Old copper bracelets, pelts, a couple arrow heads. Wonder if they were going to sell it." Meviahd shifted things aside, angling the pack towards the firelight so she could see better. Her glowing blue eyes were narrowed with sudden curiosity. They'd left in such a hurry, she'd only grabbed what was useful and shoved it in on top of everything already packed. "Humans are strange, collecting trash. Look at this. Seems like a shipment order. See the numbers? Can't read it though."

"It's Goblin," Jandali caught a couple of words as she waved the crumpled page around. He shifted closer to her, plucking the paper from her hand delicately, "It _is_ a shipment order. Food, weapons, armor... Huh..."

Jandali was well versed in Goblin. He'd done a few rounds with a Horde representative in Booty Bay, secretly listening in to some of the goblin traders' aside conversations while they and the orc had made deals. The goblins were notorious for boosting prices on things that weren't actually in little supply, and Jandali had been there to make sure the goblins were good on their word.

But this, he didn't know. The written symbol appeared to be a combination of the goblin words for 'anger' and 'cure', but with subtle changes. He'd never seen it before in his life.

"Wonder what they were doing out here. This area is generally a red zone for Alliance. A while back Devi Devi and I did a patrol here because we got a report of some forces gathering on the Ashenvale border. Found a dwarf on the plains, he was cut up like you wouldn't believe. Said he'd run into some orcs, hadn't been able to find a friendly to help him out for almost a week. Devi Devi could barely carry him back. They're real solid, dwarves." She fell silent, trailing off of the memory. Jandali could tell she was thinking about the Horse Hawk.

Licking his chapped lips, the troll said quietly, "There still time for you to turn back. Come up with a good story for it, or maybe deny it. You could still return to your people, Meviahd Moonweaver."

She turned her glowing eyes to him and, for a second, Jandali was compelled by the strength he saw in her face.

"Maybe I do not know who my people are. Savage is the Horde, but savage is the Alliance, too." She actually reached up and ghosted her hand underneath the stump of his mangled tusk. "The elves of my village called me '_Shea'untal _when they thought I was not listening.'"

"Black sheep." Jandali translated. The conversation was headed somewhere too thick for him. Quickly, he remarked, "Maybe it is better than Long Nose, though."

Meviahd laughed, shaking her head and turning away from him.

"Go to sleep, _Tah'zir._" Her accent was horrible, but he smiled at the effort, "It will be your watch before you know it."

_________________

The next morning Jandali woke to the sound of wings. For a moment panic seized him, and he was back with the regiment of orcs, commanding them across the countryside. Constantly in fear that the Horse Hawk would escape and rip him to shreds.

But he remembered he was with the elf now. Jandali sat up slowly, shivering with the effort and early morning stiffness. The sound of wings had not stopped, but was drawing closer.

"Meviahd?" The troll called out to her without thinking. She didn't respond, but he caught sight of her, standing several feet away and waving her arms towards the sky. Her back was turned towards him. The troll looked up and found the source of her excitement.

Devi Devi plummeted through the last few feet of air, landing hastily and nearly knocking the elf over. He butted her with his head, careful of his huge antlers, circling her with his wings. Even with the distance Jandali could hear Meviahd's cries of joy. The Horse Hawk moved with similar pleasure, bounding about her as if he were a young dog instead of a huge, chimeric creature. Then for a moment Meviahd stilled and pressed herself into the ruff of feathers around his neck, the Horse Hawk nuzzling against her with his polished beak. It was so tender and private Jandali felt embarrassed, shifting his gaze elsewhere.

When he looked back they were walking towards him. Meviahd was resting her hand on Devi Deiv's neck, the Horse Hawk loping close to her. Jandali had never seen her smile like she was then. It lit her face like shafts of light cutting through clouds.

"The troll is a mess," Devi Devi stated in his deep-river voice. "He wears no shirt and smells like blood and animal fear. He is not worth your time."

"I can hear you, beastie," Jandali growled. He felt ridiculous, unable to stand without Meviahd's help. He didn't dare bare his teeth at the Horse Hark, but his lips twitched.

"You were meant to hear. Perhaps it will put some sense in your hollow head where sense cannot be put into hers." Devi Devi replied, tossing his antlered head.

"Shush," Meviahd told him, stepping forwards to help Jandali up. He took her hand grudgingly now, dropping it as if it were diseased when he finally could stand. The Horse Hawk snorted.

"You are stubborn, child. Your skull is thick and resistant to reason." Rolling one of his golden eyes towards Jandali, Devi Devi said, "Yesterday night two humans arrived in Astranaar speaking of an elf with white hair cut close to her head, and barred markings upon her face like the open wings of a bird. They told of how she murdered a man to defend a barbarian. A troll. Meviahd's sisters journeyed to Astranaar to find news of their beloved youngest sister, and now they curse her name with every breath left in their chests. She has brought shame to her family. She has brought shame to me."

Jandali turned to Meviahd, but the elf was not looking at him. Her face was grim, but when she spoke it seemed without inflection.

"And yet you came to find me still?"

"I searched the pass between Ashevale and Orgrimmar for many, many days. I thought you lost when I found the bodies of the slain orcs and elves. The only reason I am here now is because of the story the humans told, and a hope that it was not true."

"But it was," Meviahd replied softly. Her voice was low, but even, "I have done the things they claimed of me. I am not sorry. The humans have their own bloodlust to answer to. If my people cannot see that, so be it."

The Horse Hawk went quiet. Jandali could feel some subtle communication pass between the elf and the creature, but he could read neither of their faces. Guilt gnawed at his stomach. He knew what it meant for the elf to be cut off from her people, and he also knew it to be his fault.

"Where will you go?" The Horse Hawk asked after a long time, "Where else is there anything for you?" The Horse Hawk was pleading with her. Devi Devi was too proud to beg her outright, but Jandali could hear at least that in his voice.

"There are trolls here, somewhere. Shamans." Jandali said suddenly, "I was told they were establishing a separate faction, setting up a village somewhere here in the Barrens."

"I owe Meviahd my life," He paused, testing the words on his tongue as he said them. Making sure he meant them. And he did; they rang with truth. "If you were to find those shamans, they maybe take us in. I would give them my word for her."

The Horse Hawk stared at him for a long time with unblinking eyes. He flicked his horse's tail at Meviahd and motioned for her to follow him silently. They stopped a far ways from Jandali so that he could not hear their hushed Darnassian conversation. The troll sat back down, unable to stand still any longer. The wound on his waist felt lit with fire.

After almost an hour the Horse Hawk spread his wings and took off into the air. Meviahd watched him for a long time until he was a speck in the sky, then she came back to Jandali once more. She dropped heavily next to him in the sand, pulling her knees to her chest.

"What did he say?" Jandali asked when his curiosity finally got the better of him.

Meviahd didn't look at him, still staring off into the sky, but she replied, "That he cannot abandon his hatchling. He will find the shamans."

"Oh." Jandali had not expected such a personal answer. The whole situation was almost too ridiculous for him to accept.

"He has never called me that before. I think he meant it."

"Oh," the troll repeated. They were getting back into the heavy sort conversation Jandali wasn't ready for. He fell silent again, allowing Meviahd to contemplate the sky and himself some time to think.

It was hours before the Horse Hawk returned. When he did he only stated simply that he had found what he thought to be the place, and that it would be quicker if they were to fly. Jandali was immediately adverse to the idea. He was only coaxed onto the creature's back by the fact that the village was another three days walk at their pace, and the pain was too overwhelming. He allowed Meviahd to help him up onto Devi Devi's back. She sprung on to him nimbly herself, clutching at the feathers around his neck. Jandali rested his hands warily on her shoulders.

They lurched into the air and Jandali's stomach dropped into his toes. The ground was suddenly so far away. He scrabbled for better handholds and found himself pressed against Meviahd's back, his arms around her waist.

"I am afraid of the heights," he hissed in her ear, too scared to be ashamed. He felt her shrug under his chest, but whatever words she might have said were whipped away by the wind.

They flew for a while, coasting on the warm Barrens air. Jandali watched the trees and animals pass under him like pebbles underfoot. It seemed like an eternity before he spotted the half-finished thatch roofs and raised-floor huts of the little settlement. The Horse Hawk glided down gently, landing a ways from their destination.

"This is as far as I can go, Mevi. I will return to Darnassus, and I will tell your sisters that you are dead."

Meviahd just nodded, sliding off the creature's back and helping Jandali down. He was ashamed he needed her help at all, and was quick to move away from her. The Horse Hawk swung his head around to look at one of the tall hills that dotted the otherwise flat plains of the Barrens.

"When Elune has opened her eye fully, one might find me."

Jandali knew it was as close as he would come to say that he would visit her. Meviahd nodded again and stood stiff and straight as a Night Elf soldier as Devi Devi took wing and was off.

They began to walk towards the village, Meviahd marching almost blank faced.

"What will you tell them?" She asked him, apprehension making her voice brittle.

"The truth. It is more than enough."

They met the first guard not long after that. He had probably been alerted by the sight of the Horse Hawk's landing, and was brandishing the mace he carried in the open. At the sight of Jandali he stopped and called out a short greeting in Zandali, motioning towards the elf with his weapon.

"_The elf is not our enemy, on my word. Who is it that leads this place? Tell them the Jandali would speak with them."_

The troll, his face war-painted and suspicious, called out, "_Stay. There are others watching you. If you are who you claim to be, the Antu'zul will know." _

The troll took off running across the grasses, his long legs swiftly carrying him back in towards the settlement. Jandali could see other trolls in the far distance, moving about carrying lumber or tufts of grass for the roof. In the middle they had lit a fire and a few gathered around it, speaking and waving their hands about in wide gesturing arcs. He realized his heart ached for home.

Beside him, Meviahd shifted her weight back and forth nervously. These were not her people. No one was.

The troll guard returned only after a short amount of time, a smaller figure walking by his side. Jandali's heart leapt to recognize the troll that returned with him. She was about Jandali's age, though her body still possessed the curves and vitality of a young troll woman. Her face was handsome, and two small, pearly tusks arched from her thick lips. Against the somewhat muted blue of her skin, her orange, shoulder-length hair was a shock of color.

"_It is the Jandali, as he said," _she announced, letting her strong voice carry across the grounds. From behind a few nearby trees stepped more guards, armed to the teeth, "_You may stand down."_

She walked slowly, stopping in front of Jandali. Her face broke into a wide grin, and she reached up to pull him into a close hug. Jandali could smell all the familiar scents of home clinging to her hair and skin, and he wrapped his arms around her.

"_Tah'zir," _she said quietly, so that only he could hear. Louder, she announced, "_Jandali. We thought you lost."_

"_Zuri. I did not expect to find you here." _He let go of her, conscience of the guards around them, and of Meviahd's uncomfortable shuffling. "_Antu'zul? You, the Great Overseer?"_

"_There is much to explain,"_ Zuri reached up and touched the stump of his tongue with two fingers, careful to be gentle. She searched his face for a moment, then looked to Meviahd. Her gaze was calculating. Unfriendly, but not filled with hatred. "_Much to explain indeed."_


	10. Chapter 9

Wow, I got stuck on this chapter. I had lots of trouble writing it, revised it a million times, and took forever to release it. And I think it shows, how much I was just stuck. Heh, sorry guys. I hope I can make it up to you with a double update .

That being said, the second bit of this is something I've been waiting to do for a while now.

((WoW belongs to Blizz))

_________________

Meviahd felt like a prisoner once more.

They tied her hands behind her, though Jandali insisted they didn't. It was not as tightly as he had tied them himself, but just to be bound at all made Meviahd feel like a caged animal. Desperate to be free. It was a precaution, Jandali explained to her quickly in Darnassian, and once he had told their story he was sure they'd let her go.

They were led by two armed guards into the settlement. Surprisingly, one of them was an orc, and Meviahd winced with the memory of the orcs who had held her captive before.

The whole time they walked Jandali chattered non-stop in Zandali, leaning on the female troll for support. His actions were lighter and his limp less, as if being somewhere he might call home was enough to serve as a healing balm for his wounds. Meviahd felt stung once she realized he must be talking about the settlement instead of what had happened to them. He gestured at the buildings and the trolls around them, and the female appeared to be answering questions.

They were led to one of the smaller huts. It was one that was almost completed, with only sections of the roof missing the last layer of thatch. Inside were a pair of trolls who peeled back Jandali's crusted bandage and clucked like mother hens. They bickered amongst themselves, loping back and forth to collect various herbs and salves from jars and spreading them not only on the wound on his waist, but on his tusk as well. Jandali sat stoney faced in the chair they'd offered him, only breaking his composure when one of the trolls brought forth a long silver needle. He winced every time they pulled it through the skin around his wound, sewing shut the puckered mouth. Jandali was re-bandaged with more skill Meviahd could ever have managed.

Once this was done the trolls escorted Jandali and Meviahd to a larger hut. The first room was a huge, circular affair with a fire pit built into the middle and several rows of stepped seats. It would probably serve as a community meeting room, but currently only a few trolls were inside resting away from the hot sun. They looked up to their entrance, watching Meviahd with wary eyes and nodding respectfully to the female troll.

She led them through a doorways hanging with layers of beaded ropes and little charms. The room inside was smaller, but already well-decorated. On the walls and at the corners of the room were painted bird skulls with candles in their round eye sockets, antelope horns carved with runes, zhevra hooves and little furry paws thrown together in woven baskets, and the claws and little bones of different animals strung together with beads. From the roof hung several silken cloths that, in the light from the high windows, cast color in juicy peaches and cool cyan blues.

The troll offered them a few overstuffed cushions to sit on. Their guards were motioned away, presumably to stand at the doorway outside.

"You leave with fifteen orc soldier group. You return with one elf long after we think you dead, Jandali. I would very much like to know how this be happening." She was speaking in common for Meviahd's benefit, the elf realized. She couldn't fathom why the troll would bother. As far as Meviahd knew, she was regarded as little more than a prisoner, a guilty party.

Jandali cleared his throat awkwardly. He had sat next to Meviahd, across from the troll he seemed to know so well. When he began speaking his voice was tinted with some level of shame.

"I lost them all, Zuri..."

He told her everything. Meviahd learned the things she hadn't known before, filling in gaps that she'd never asked the troll about. He spoke of how, at first, the orcs tried to inspect goblin caravans through subterfuge. When that failed they attacked them, at least the ones surely returning from or headed to Alliance villages, sparing none so that word would not get back to the goblins. Nothing of interest had ever justified their cause.

"I knew the girl was Thrakk'reva, Horse Hawk Rider," he paused and translated quickly for Meviahd, "These white markings on her face, they all have them. They familiar from some of my feild translation days. For a while I thought she would be valuable..."

It was strange, hearing his side. Like listening to a story about someone else. Jandali related the capture of Devi Devi and his eventual escape with relative ease, his voice even and unwavering. He had a strong story-teller's voice, and a good sense of when pause and speed up to draw a listener in. Meviahd could almost see him gathered around the central fire pit in the room behind her, raising his voice to begin some nightly tale.

But when he reached the point of the story when the Sentinels and the harpies attacked, his voice dead panned. He was monotone and analytical, giving only the barest of details when explaining how he'd lost his troops, how Meviahd had taken care of him, and finally, the loss of his tusk. He finished neatly by telling of Devi Devi's flight, then sat back on his cushion and stared at the table.

Throughout his story, the troll woman Zuri had remained mostly quiet. She'd interjected with a question here and there, but otherwise listened with a nonpartisan expression that occasionally shone with concern. Now she sighed, folding her hands in front of her. Each finger was decorated with twisted silver or wooden bands, sometimes scraps of cloth. She rubbed at them with her fingers, a nervous habit.

Zuri said something quick to Jandali in the troll language. Meviahd just barely caught the word 'Thrall'. The troll blanched and shook his head resolutely. Zuri grumbled, twisting her rings again.

"And you?" Zuri suddenly spoke in common again, turning her head hawkishly so that she could just see Meviahd. It was a trick the stuffier hippogryphs used when they were trying to intimidate her in the rookery. Meviahd puffed her thin chest slightly and looked her straight in the eye. Inside the elf apprehension bubbled, but Meviahd's face remained smooth and controlled.

"I want to stay here." She said simply.

Zuri paused for what seemed an awkward amount of time, then said, "Per-.... Per-..."

She funbled, over the word, and finally Jandali offered, "Permanently?"

"Yes, permanently was the one I be lookin' for. But, Meh-vee-ahd," the way she said her name was like Jandali had said it the first time hearing it. The elf remembered how he'd rolled it on his tongue distastefully. Zuri continued, "I thought maybe you stay for few days, rest here and get back on your feet. But permanently..."

Zuri paused and looked quickly out one of the high windows above her. Between the silken cloths there was a visible slice of clear blue sky. Outside, the sounds of the construction filtered through. Meviahd tightened her bound hands.

There was no love lost between the trolls and the elves. Meviahd knew that. But she still had to try.

"This place we build here is a place for peace, this is so. The shaman will gather in this place. Trolls first, they will come easy to a village their people make. Then other shaman of the Horde will come. Tauren and orc. It will take long time, this I know, but someday we think maybe the Draenei shaman will come too. We can no longer afford to miss what the other shamans might have learn from the spirits."

"That being said," Zuri narrowed her eyes at the elf. It was more of a calculating look than one of hostility, but Meviahd still felt the pressure of it. The troll continued, "You are no shaman. You maybe did good things for Jandali, but you not be having my trust that easily."

"But she has mine." It was the first time Jandali had said anything with power behind it since he had relayed their tale. Meviahd turned to look at him, though he was looking at Zuri. In profile, Jandali's carved features and aquiline nose looked strong and resolute. Zuri seemed to catch the subtle shift in his mood and she loosened the tightness in her shoulders, suddenly cracking into a real smile. It was a neat trick that untied the tense knot that hung in the air.

"Then Jandali, she be your problem. I holdin' you her mistakes on you, mon. See that she don't make many."

Jandali frowned, his jaw tightening, but he took the sharp knife Zuri handed him from the scabbard at her waist. He cut the bonds around Meviahd's wrists with a deft, but rough movement. His mood had gone sour just like that, though from just what Meviahd couldn't be sure. He rose, pulling Meviahd up after him by the arm.

"Come then," Jandali's voice contained a barely concealed bitterness, "Let us tell the people, so that perhaps you might walk among us without getting that pretty face cut to ribbons."

* * *

_Interlude____

He was Pretus Thornmantle. Pretus the Plague Minister.

It was a new title, one that he let slide slick and juicy off of his tongue when he told others of his appointment. It was a title that spoke of power. A title created out of necessity for the situation. It was a title that could only be given to an individual of extreme intelligence and resourcefulness.

And of extreme brutality.

Pretus was all of those things and more. His nomination by Fandral Staghelm had been one of little surprise. Tyrande Whisperwind had put forth her own candidate, but the when the vote was cast, the cut was clear. Important officers of the Sisters of Elune and high officials of the Cenarion Circle: both agreed that Pretus was better equipped for the task ahead. Pretus took the title of 'Plague Minister' with reverence.

He was awarded his own office set into a tree high above the western side of the Cenarion Enclave of Darnassus. It was large, compromised of many different rooms and twisting hallways. Previously, the space had been used to teach young druids. A classroom environment where they would learn the importance of life, and how to treat it with respect. Pretus found a certain, delicious irony in that.

He had studied with gnomish engineers. Impetuous little creatures, but Pretus had learned from them the inner workings of machines. Mechanisms much like humanoid bodies, working on gears and wires instead of organs and veins. It was different, but useful information.

He had studied, too, with an exiled, captured undead scientist. The revulsive creature might have been an elf at one point, but his flesh rotted from his bones and his teeth poked through his cheeks. Unwelcome in the great city, he had been housed in a guarded cabin in the green woods, and had taught Pretus what there was to know of how chemicals mixed and reacted. How electricity could spring some back from the dead, if used correctly. And how, if one was careful, it was possible to keep something alive for a very long time when it had no real right to be.

The Forsaken creature had been taken care of afterwards, of course. It was a mercy, after all, to end it's tortured existence. And besides, Pretus wanted some things he knew to be kept a secret. There was always an advantage to having a few secret aces up your sleeve.

Pretus walked now through the lush, balmy Darnassus with an uncharacteristic spring in his step. A week since his appointment as the Plague Minister and the hunters he'd set out had finally found a specimen for his use, returning three days ago with their bounty in tow. Not what he'd been looking for, no, but useful nonetheless.

The Plague Minister mounted the beginning of the many steps that lead to his office. There were dozens and dozens, and anyone who had council with Pretus would have to climb them all to reach him. Pretus had been especially fond of this location for that reason. And secrecy, of course. The privacy afforded by beings hundreds of yards over the city's head was invaluable.

The sound of bubbling chemicals reached his ears when his foot hit the last step. Smiling to himself, the Plague Minister unlocked his door with a key from a ring that swung from his hip. The door pushed inwards to his light touch and the sound of sloshing liquids became louder.

He had briefly considered putting a welcoming room, but his worktables had overlapped into the foyer area, and the Plague Minister had given up keeping them out of it. His research came first.

The office was all sterile metal table surfaces, displays of surgical knives, and walls and walls of vials. Unsettling things floated in jars of green and brown liquids viscous as swamp muck. On a few of the tables in the farther rooms were pieces of maroon and pink flesh held suspended in time in glowing blue magic shields. But it was the farthest table, behind the thick steel door, that Pretus was interested in.

His subject was a harpy. It was a younger female, with a rail-thin little body and a face marred by the customary symptoms of his research. The pustules and sores that spread, usually starting from the corners of the eyes and down the cheeks, were increasing in number every day.

He had tried, at first, to worsen them: slicing the raised sores open with a gleaming silver blade. Soon he found that any bodily fluid would do, whether it be the creatures frothy spit or it's thick, red blood.

Ah, but curing them. That was the matter. Pretus rolled up his sleeves and washed his hands in a bucket of cold water his assistant must have brought for him earlier. He pushed through the thick steel door with some effort, swinging it on it's heavy hinges. For a moment then he stood, surveying the unconscious creature on the table with a face inscrutable. He raised his hand and picked up a long, thin knife.

The harpy had served it's purpose. The Plague Minister poised the blade over the creature's sternum, resting it against the gentle curve of skin where the collarbones met.


	11. Chapter 10

Jandali avoided her for three days afterwards.

He wanted only to be alone. He wanted to be alone so desperately his skin itched and the wound in his side yawned wide and painful. Zuri gave him a room in one of the recently finished residential buildings, and his first act was to set about devising a lock for the door. He might have given his remaining tusk to have his collection of books, far away in Sen'jin in his unattended home there. The troll locked himself away and answered the door for no one. In the dead of night he snuck into the finished kitchen pantries and ate sparingly.

No one knocked on his door to bother him. He guessed that Zuri was keeping an eye on Meviahd, but he couldn't bring himself to find out. That small, mean part of him insisted he was no babysitter. He'd give his word, yes, but he would not be held totally responsible for the girl. Her mistakes were her own to make.

The trolls of the new village had taken it as expected. They had been told draenei shaman would come, but it was a neutrality based upon the following of their creed. No one had said anything about elves, and certainly not at this stage in the game. They hadn't rioted or raised trouble, but Jandali could see the way their eyes had shone with red, and the calculating manner in which they had scanned the girl. He had felt the apprehension radiating from Meviahd like the electricity before a storm.

For three days he remained in peace, and on the fourth, it was Meviahd who broke it.

Someone was banging on something. The troll woke with a start, like he was dragging himself from a ice water. His limbs felt stiff. There it was again. His door.

Jandali rose stiffly from the small bed palette he'd pushed into the corner. He still had trouble sitting up, and the gash in his side ached most in the mornings. The sound of that insistent, righteous knocking reverberated in his poor sore head. The troll limped to the thin door, wrenching it open and mumbling, "_Ezcute, bielo, quiero daz-... _Meviahd."

The elf frowned at him, narrowing her glowing blue eyes. Jandali found them almost ghostly; it was like looking into the eyes of a creature so different from yourself, and not knowing whether they are more intelligent than you, or more feral.

With a sliver of ice in her voice, Meviahd asked, "Did you just call me beautiful?"

The morning seemed to clear from his mind and he said quickly, "Ah was expecting Zuri." Perhaps he hadn't meant to say that either. Jandali licked his lips, and regained his composure.

"What you want, girlie?"

Meviahd sized him up for another moment before saying, with a certain military precision, "A messenger came for Zuri this morning while I was getting my orders from her. Whatever it was, it troubled her greatly. I heard her tell someone else she would want to discuss it with you, but that she did not want to bother you. So I came to get you."

"Did she tell you to?"

"No, I just did." The way Meviahd said it, it was like a challenge. Jandali studied her for a moment and, yes, there it was. She was baiting him; he could see it in the smug quirks at the corners of her lips.

Jandali peeled his mouth into a huge, toothy grin.

"Two can play at that game." He told her in a voice that implied he knew exactly what she was playing, and that he was far better at it. Meviahd, for her part, only grinned back at him.

"Wait here a second," the shaman turned and headed back into his room. Behind him Meviahd leaned forwards a bit, perhaps trying to get a better look in. The troll was rummaging around in a set of drawers full of borrowed clothing. A lot of it was traditional sorts of shaman garb, ceremonial vestments and heavily ornamented robes that Zuri has procured for him. There was little shortage to these around the village, since the shamans had taken special care to bring with them the tools of their trade. But it was the simpler stuff that was hard to come by.

Jandali pulled a lightly decorated leather kilt from the bundle of clothes, as well as a sleeveless leather vest. He hooked his fingers purposefully around the waistband of the pants he was wearing. Meviahd snapped something in Darnassian, too quick to catch, but most certainly an insult. Jandali's laughed when he heard the door slam.

"You look like a mess, and you smell like a hangover." She told him petulantly through the door. The shaman cast a glance across his room, where next to his bed were two empty bottles of what had been some rather acerbic wine.

"Well your pants are too tight, and you look like a hussy." He responded evenly, pulling the shirt up over his head. That shut her up for a few minutes. Smirking, the troll opened the door again, greeting her fully dressed. She was glaring at him.

"Zuri is in the main hall."

"Lead the way, dove."

She began to walk ahead of him without a backwards glance, her spine ram rod straight. Jandali almost laughed again, but he was playing stern now, his mouth set dourly. He half hoped Meviahd would turn to look at him again, but she did not. The game became slow.

"How did you know the Zandali for 'beautiful?'" He asked once the silence between them became boring. They were making their way across the village grounds now. The room Zuri had given to Jandali was in a residential building on the outskirts of the growing village.

"I knew that's what you said to me."

"Not to _you_, but yes."

"Zuri has had me working planting in the herb gardens. That's what they keep saying about the new plants. _Bielo_ this and _bielo _that. Picked it up."

"Ah was thinkin' maybe some impish young troll lad taught you the word. Lots of men after you, Meh-vee-ahd?"

Meviahd snorted. Quickly, she turned to look back at him. Jandali increased the severity of the frown his mouth was trying to form, though he could still feel a smile pinching at the corners. He'd forgotten how he'd enjoyed teasing her.

"I hope they all have pretty dresses like yours." She said.

"Unlikely, no one has dresses as fine as mine. Beside, no trolls gonna be after you. You look like a boy from behind." This wasn't exactly true. For a second Jandali eyed her rear decisively and figured that no, he would not have mistaken Meviahd for a boy. But he wasn't about to tell her that.

She was quiet once more. They'd reached the center of the village, and trolls were working around them. Most were still helping build, since the center of the village was being finalized with details like porches and decorative sculptures. Others were beginning to plan storefronts, laying stones for walkways, or carting crates of food and materials back and forth. Jandali suddenly wondered where they'd come by the gold to fund it all.

At first, the troll assumed Meviahd had grown tired of their game, having fallen silent. He quickened his step, coming to walk beside her in a few of his long, limping strides. He had been wrong, he saw. Meviahd was keeping her head down, though she would look up and nod respectfully to trolls as they passed. Sometimes they nodded back, more often the gave no response at all. Occasionally, they bared their teeth at her. Jandali felt his own lips twist.

"You said Zuri had you working in the herb garden?" He asked Meviahd gently.

They had crossed the town center and come to the other side of the settlement. Here were houses of all different sizes, half of which had not been put up three days ago when Jandali had gone into hiding. Meviahd seemed to be leading them to one of the larger ones, where a few trolls were already exiting it's impressive, wrap around porch.

He thought maybe she would not answer him, but then she said quietly, "I think she thought I might be good at it, being an elf. But I am not. The trolls grow impatient with me. I have crushed three transplants already. One made my hands itch badly."

Jandali actually laughed. Meviahd fixed him in place with one of her pins and needles stares, stopping before the porch. The troll shaman shook his head.

"Sorry girlie, somethin' be funny about you, itching your palms and taking slack for holding a flower too tight."

"Which Ah'm sure you can be talkin' 'bout later."

Jandali turned his head to the sound of that acidic voice the way the tide turns to the moon. Zuri was standing above them on the raised platform, her hands on her hips. She was wearing a simple red and white cloth dress that fell low around the neck and across her heavy breasts. Despite the relative understatement of her garments, the air she gave off was one of authority. Meviahd's face went blank, and she stood a little straighter. Jandali gave the troll woman a bird-charmer's smile.

"Naturally, Zuri Antu'zul. Could you be tellin' me where the hunters be patrolling around this time?"

Zuri, her harsh face falling for one of confusion, blinked and said, "They been south, harassing the quillboars' herds mostly... Why?"

"Because that is where Meviahd is going now. Fetch your blades, girlie. Go out and get us some grub."

Meviahd hesitated, looking from one troll to the other. Finally Zuri raised a hand and waved her off, retreating through the tall doorway of her home. When she was out of sight, Meviahd turned towards Jandali and asked, her voice grudging, "Are you going to hide tonight, or will I see you?"

"No more hidin' for me. Ah'm sure Ah'll see you, Meh'vi."

She gave him a strange look, then turned away and set off across the village grounds again. Jandali watched the severe line of her straight back for a few moments before he mounted the steps up Zuri's porch, limping over each one.

She was not waiting at the door, but further inside, down a long hallway. Jandali knew her home in Sen'jin. It was next to his own, and he could tell you the number of stairs to her top floor. He could make his way to her living room, or to her bedroom, with his eyes closed. For Zuri to live in a new place...

She was in a kitchen on the other side of the house, washing dishes with her back turned to him. For a moment Jandali leaned against the doorway, tracing the curve of her hips with his eyes and steeling himself.

"_I missed you,_" He said softly.

She did not stop, her hands working roughly in the sloshing water of the hewn-stone basin that formed the sink. Jandali could read the tenseness in the way her shoulders were set. He swallowed and limped forwards a few more steps, placing his hands on those hard-muscled shoulders.

"_Did you miss _me_?"_

Zuri whirled, a bowl of luke-warm water in hand, and drenched him with it. Caught by surprise, Jandali tripped backwards and fell hard on his ass, barking out a short noise of pain. Zuri was without pity.

"_From the reports I've been getting, all you missed was Cenarion Spirits."_ She spat, standing over him with her hands on her hips. Someone had helped her tie bits of her wild orange hair into tight, beaded braids, and she looked all the more formidable because of it. More in control.

"_I needed to be alone. What about you, Antu'zul? The Great Overseer. Just incapacitated with misery, were you?"_

"_Don't start. When you didn't come back, we thought you were dead. For days you were gone. No sign of your troops, no sign of you. I had my duties as a shaman, and they would not wait for anyone."_

Jandali picked himself up from the puddle on the floor without her help, using the nearby table for support. He could feel the beginnings of a raw, reddish anger forming somewhere deep inside of him.

"_Forgive me, I was a little predisposed. I would have _loved_ to miss the whole bit with the elves, and then later with the humans, but it really wasn't an option, was it?"_

Zuri paused, and he saw her eyes flick to the sawed-off stump of his missing tusk. Then she demanded,_ "So what is she to you?"_

"_She?"_

"_The elf."_

"_Oh," _he hadn't expected that. Not at all. The anger in him died and drifted away. "_Nothing. No, well- something. But not like that. Listen, Zuri."_

He looked to the side for a moment, licking his chapped lips uncertainly.

"_They bent me over a rock in the back of that cave. Ground my chin into the stone and pushed a saw into my face. And I tasted it for a moment, Zuri. Death on my tongue. I knew they were going to kill me and I was afraid. More afraid than I've ever been."_

He had her attention now.

"_Meviahd saved my life in that cave and I've no illusions about it. I had an _experience_, Zuri, you see?" _He was smiling at her by the end of it. Like spring rain breaking, Zuri's face finally melted into an expression of bemused annoyance. She shook her head.

"_She told me a messenger came for you?" _He asked after a moment.

Zuri was serious once more. She sat at the nearby table, indicating the chair next to her.

"_The disease you talked about on the bird women... The messenger reported a similar disease. He said it was first discovered in the naga of Stanglethorn."_

"_Stranglethorn... That's not good. That's cross continent and-"_

Zuri swallowed hard and interrupted him. "_It gets worse. It was then reported that the tribe of Bloodscalps there were dying in great numbers from a disease they were calling 'The Tears'. All with little red sores and marks."_

"_Cross species. Very." _Jandali said quietly so that she would not have to. Those first two words held more weight than he wanted to consider. "_What are they going to do?"_

"_I have sent word to Thrall and Vol'jin. It was my runner, coming back with word from Booty Bay. I think, perhaps, I am the first to know. We will have to wait for their word." _She paused, then, "_What will you do?"_

He shrugged. "_Maybe I will go home for a bit and get some of my stuff. Bring it back here. This is interesting, this shaman village. Besides, I should stay at least to make sure Meviahd settles in."_

Zuri snorted, directing her gaze over Jandali's shoulder and out the window behind him.

"_The girl does not know what she is."_

"_No_," Jandali agreed, tapping a finger against his temple, "_Not at home in here, not at home anywhere. She is a soldier, but she holds little allegiance to the people that drafted her. She is a Night Elf, but when she speaks of Elune it is hollow as a blasted tree. She told me she has only sisters. No friends, no lovers, little family left. She is lost, I think. But when she fights, it is with all the clever, beautiful viciousness of a troll woman." _He winked at her.

"_How can I be mad at you, when you speak with such a pretty silver tongue?" _Zuri let a sigh cross her lips and she leaned forwards, working her fingers at the buttons on his leather vest. Jandali's heart clogged his throat, and he felt the warmth creep into his fingers and the tips of his ears. Zuri pushed his vest off of his shoulders and began to unwrap the bandage around his waist.

"_This is not healing well..." _She ran a gentle finger over the wound, grimacing at the gummy black blood that crusted on it's surface. Then she placed her palms fully upon it, surging through them a hot, green magic that began to work furiously around the scabs. It burned and itched, but was nothing compared to the original pain of it.

"_Ah, yes. My wound..." _Jandali let the disappointment filter through his teeth and down his throat. He felt foolish, but he shouldn't have been surprised. "_Why did you not do this sooner?"_

"_I was mad at you. I didn't want to touch you."_

Jandali nodded. That made sense. He remembered the anger that he'd felt brooding in the pit of his stomach during their fight, and he knew what it was not to want to touch someone for fear of doing something you regretted. The two trolls sat in silence, and all Jandali could think of was when he had woken up in that cave and saw Meviahd's strong, bruised face.


	12. Chapter 11

Meviahd set her eye down the straight shaft of the blunderbuss.

"You stand like you made ah wood. Looser, pretend you liquid. Feel it flowin' in yah muscles, mon." He said, placing one hand on her shoulder and the other flat against the small of her back. He pressed them, shifting her pose, letting his hands linger.

"Like that. It gonna kick back against yah shouldah hard, yah need tah be ready to adust."

Meviahd aimed across the plain again and fired. The sharp report of the gun cracked through the air. Her target, one of the battleboars grazing unprotected on the side of the hill, fell to the ground.

"Did you see that, Majir? I got it." She turned to the troll who had been guiding her, only half-aware of the beaming smile on her face. He smiled back at her, placing a hand on the head of a waist-tall red raptor at his side.

"We will let Little Rojo have this one. Go gettit, boy," He gave the huge creature a little push and it went off running across the dry grass.

Meviahd had been training with Majir for about a week now. He was head of the hunting party, though young for it, and an extremely skilled warrior and tracker as well. The first day Meviahd had met him had been the morning that Jandali had sent her off to the hunters. Majir had scoffed at her, calling her a number of racial slurs throughout the day. His smugness over her inexperienced ranged abilities stung worse than his insults. It pushed Meviahd to use her throwing knives more, but without the range of the bows and guns the hunters used, she was ineffective.

For three more days she had hunted with them from morning until early evening, taking their biting comments. Most of the trolls did not know a lot of common, but what they knew was not short of harsh words. Finally, Majir ventured to call her a 'motherless Moon whelp'. She'd drove her fist so hard into his face she'd heard her knuckles pop. After that, he respected her.

There were no hard feelings between them. He'd offered to teach her how to use a gun or bow, and Meviahd had dragged out the goblins' bronze blunderbuss. They'd been practicing after the hunt for the past week, collecting spare game when Meviahd managed to make a shot. Sometimes, like tonight, he would bring a satchel of fresh fruit and a bottle of light wine, and they would mostly share a companionable silence.

Tonight, though, Majir was talkative. He spread out the thick woolen blanket he'd brought with him and dropped next to Meviahd on it, crossing his legs underneath him. He began to slice open a dark red fruit with a knife from his hip, peeling the skin back to expose flesh the delicate pink color of Meviahd's fingernails. While he did so, he spoke.

"My curiosity finally be overridin' me, Mevi." He used her shortened name. A lot of the trolls in the village had begun to recently. Jandali had told her that it was a good sign. Young trolls were given monosyllabic names. When they reached adulthood and could be recognized by their tribes they earned different, more suitable names. Calling her Mevi, Jandali explained, was the trolls' way of telling her she had a chance.

"What you be doin' here, eh?" Majir asked, "Everyone know your people don't want you no more, but why not go somewhere else? I saw an elder spit at your feet yesterday. Why you put up with dat?"

Meviahd just shrugged. "I like it here," she said simply, "What are _you_ doing here, Majir? You're no shaman."

"No, but I be a troll. I go where my people tell me. For a while I even travel with the Earthen Ring in _Outland_, protectin' them. Hired muscle, though. Not part of them."

"The Earthen Ring?"

"Group of shamans, all kinds of races. Draenei Broken and Lost, too. Deal with elementals." Majir passed her some slices of the fruit he'd been cutting and moved on the next one. Meviahd had never seen Majir move with anything other than a slow, steady deliberateness.

"Sounds kind of like this." She gestured back to where the village was, half and hour's walk in the distance. Majir, looked up at it, then back at his fruit with a thoughtful face.

"Yes and no. Earthen Ring, you gotta be part ah them. You either with them or you blocked out. All I ever heard was commands, no plans. They aligned with the Horde, but when it come down to it, the Horde have no control over them and Alliance don't trust 'em. This be different. Draenei from Alliance can come here without fear, and they can return without pickin' a side. Just information exchanged."

"And it's all sanctioned by Thrall." Meviahd mused, "It's a bit of a power play, isn't it? He comes off really open to diplomacy, and at the same time, he gets to run the whole thing."

Majir laughed. "You smarter than they say, Mevi." The hunter's raptor, Little Rojo, returned, licking it's needle teeth with it's thick slab of a tongue. It settled beside Majir on the blanket and he threw an affectionate arm around it's neck.

"This be an interesting thing, but he walkin' the sword's edge."

"Jandali told me he thinks Thrall's using this as a test run. Like maybe he doesn't expect this to succeed, but it will work out the kinks for the next similar thing."

Majir snorted, frowning slightly. "The Jandali says more than maybe he should be sayin'. Got a proud tongue, that one. You spend a lotta time with him, eh? What you do when you go there?"

"He's teaching me orcish." Meviahd grinned at him, "He says I am a quick study. I could probably hold a conversation with you, even. But I would be slow at it."

Major nodded, "When you better at orcish, not so hard to make friends with other trolls. You learn Zandali, though. That is the best way."

"He says that's next."

"You plannin' on spendin' a lot of time with him, eh Mevi?" Majir gave her a sly sort of look from the corner of his eye. "He had a wife once, you know?"

"He did?" Meviahd had never heard him speak of a wife. She remembered back in the cave when she'd asked him what he would return to, and all he said was his books. That had surprised her, she recalled. Jandali was much older than Majir, but most trolls in the village who were Majir's age already had wives.

"I met her one time. In Outland. She be a miserable wretch, Caddi. The only reason I know it be her because I remember the name. It be announced to the trolls the Jandali marry a woman named Caddi, she one in the same. A few years later we hear about no children. Then she up and leave him, go to Outland. She a warrior. Died there."

"Oh..." Meviahd tucked the information away in her mind, storing it for later. She wouldn't ask Jandali about it yet, and certainly not with how he'd been lately. The troll had been fighting with Zuri nearly every day. About the direction the village would take, he told Meviahd. It took a tole on his mood, and he was likely to snap at her or stop talking altogether.

They finished their fruit and Majir packed everything up in the blanket he'd carried. They didn't speak on the way back towards the village because neither had anything to say. Meviahd perhaps liked Majir the most for this reason. While the other troll hunters were constantly chatting, Majir only spoke when his words meant something.

They parted ways at Jandali's house, one of the residential buildings on the edge of town. There had been several of these buildings erected throughout the village. They were equipped with necessities on every floor so that more troll families could fit into a single building. But Jandali lived by himself on the third floor of the big house. No other families had joined him.

Majir looked thoughtfully up at the single lit window on the top floor.

"Y'know? I think Caddi was Zuri Antu'Zul's sister... Well, you be havin' fun with the Jandali. G'night." He shrugged at Meviahd and placed a big hand on her shoulder for a moment. Then he was gone, leaving the elf by herself in the path. For a few minutes she did not move, standing alone on the dirt road with her eyes fixed on the one, illuminated yellow square of the occupied window.

Jandali was uncharacteristically quiet that night. He set her down with a book on orcish he'd found (he'd been collecting them since he'd settled into his room) and moved himself out to the kitchen. When he ended her lesson for the night it was earlier than normal.

"I have a head ache," he told her quietly, but no more than that.

His silence was not his usual type, one which boiled with anger under it's shallow surfaces. He was more morose. Somber.

He bid her goodnight with little more than a mumble. Meviahd let herself out and made her way slowly across the town to where she was assigned a small room in one of the residential buildings.

Meviahd placed her hand on the wrought iron knob of the door to her home. Her home... She sucked in a gulp of air and let the shadows take her, disappearing from sight. Unseen, she walked to road back to Jandali's home. On the way, she convinced herself she was doing it because she was angry with him. She didn't believe he had a head ache and wanted to know the truth. That was all.

Outside his door, she hefted herself up a skinny palm and looked down over the square of light his window cast in his yard. Meviahd did not have long to wait. No more than twenty minuted after she'd positioned herself undetectable in the palm fronds a hooded figure came down the path. No one else was around. Those who hadn't settled into their homes for the night were all gathered around the fire pit in the center of town, sharing stories.

The figure stopped at Jandali's door and pulled back it's hood. Heart sinking, Meviahd recognized Zuri's shock of orange hair.

Meviahd had known. Of course she'd known. The worst of it was that it bothered her, and she didn't know why.

Zuri knocked on the door, gently at first, then with more vigor. It took a long time for Jandali to answer, but when he did, he was carrying a half-filled wine bottle and wearing a frown. They began to snap at each other in quick bursts of heated Zandali. Zuri gestured wildly with her hands, Jandali did the same with his wine bottle.

Meviahd's stomach knotted tightly when Zuri pushed forwards, pressing Jandali against the door frame. She kissed him, mouth moving against his fiercely.

For a moment he froze, stiff as stone and just as unreadable. Then he pushed her off. It wasn't gentle. Zuri nearly fell, stumbling backwards and righting herself furiously in the middle of the path. In the light from the open door, Meviahd could see her face crumple.

Jandali's eyes seemed scarlet, illuminated from deep within with rage. Rage and a deep, crippling hunger so tangible Meviahd could see it, even from her vantage point in the tree.

He closed the door on her, and the light in his window guttered and died. Zuri stood motionless for a few minutes in his front yard. Her face was in shadow, but Meviahd could see her fists clenching by her sides.

The shaman turned and looked straight up at her. Zuri's eyes narrowed in the dark. With sudden horror, Meviahd realized she had let the cloak of shadows around herself slip and was no longer invisible to the eye. The rogue pressed herself down into the leaves of the palm frond, gathering darkness around her again, but she couldn't be sure it was enough. She didn't even know how Zuri had found her in the first place.

They said nothing to each other. In the coming days, neither would mention the event. But every time Meviahd spoke to Zuri, or found her eyes, there was a dangerous tension there. Zuri had seen her.

___________________

Things happen in the next chapter, I swear D: They go otherwheres and don't mope around so much.


	13. Chapter 12

Wow, tons of responses lately! Whenever I see those updates for comments or faves in my e-mail it brightens my day.

This chapter is one of those ones that I had trouble planning out beforehand. It's the last of a line of them; the next few chapters I have mostly worked out in my mind. The next chapters are also where the real meat of the story starts appearing, so I'm excited for them.

* * *

Jandali wanted to quit.

When he was young, being chosen as the Jandali was an honor. He would serve his people with pride, he told his predecessor. He would wear the mantle like a war scar, displayed for everyone to see so that they would understand he was a person of distinction. And he would make a difference.

Forty years taught him that things were not so easy. One did not simply walk amongst the people and speak their language to change their minds. They did not trust him. More often than not, his position was one of exploitation, acting as a translator for Horde diplomats to listen in on the secret conversations of their Alliance counterparts.

Jandali once met a group of travelers, all speaking Common, who were traveling and studying cultures. Two orcs, a night elf, three undead, and a human; all working together to explore the social network of the occupants of Azeroth, past, present, and future. The shaman saw what could have been. In an instant, he would have thrown away his title and gone back to being Tah'zir.

But a Jandali was bound for life.

Zuri woke him early that morning. They were no longer talking to each other as friends. Cordially, the Antu'zul and the Jandali would meet briefly to discuss the direction of the shaman village. Often it was with others present. Jandali had unwittingly become a village leader, something along the lines of the head hunter, Majir, and the head healer, a pretty young troll woman named Ridia. But even when Zuri and he met alone, like they currently were, it was a markedly more tense.

"_And, of course, _I_ won't be there so you'll have to-_"

"_You won't?_" Jandali perked noticeably at the mention.

"_I told you,_ _I must stay here to represent the village. Unfortunately. Vol'jin suggested an entourage of at least four. I have decided to send Ridia, of course. Her Common isn't very good, but she's a fine diplomat nonetheless. Very approachable, and a healer just in case. We'll also send Majir-"_

"_No. Not him." _Jandali said, looking up to find Zuri glaring at him. He was not to be persuaded by it. "_He is an arrogant prick, frankly. I don't want to travel with him."_

"_A shame, but you don't get that choice. Majir is an excellent candidate. He was a bodyguard for several years, his Common is even better than mine, and he says he knows the area around your first docking point well enough in case there is an emergency."_

"_Yeah, well, so do I. And I don't need some hot-head, trigger happy moron letting loose next to Auberdine while I'm trying to negotiate a treaty. So I don't want him."_

"_And I told you, too bad." _Zuri would not budge. Jandali could see it in her face. He ducked his head suddenly, looking down at the table.

"_As you wish, Antu'zul." _She picked up the sneer in his voice, but said nothing about it. It wasn't worth the effort.

"_As for the fourth person, I hadn't quite decided yet on-"_

"_Meviahd. I've decided on her." _Jandali said, lifting his head from where he'd been looking down at the white swath of bandages still wrapped at his waist. It still wasn't healing well.

"_Her? No, of course not. Don't be stupid."_

"_I'm not being stupid. Meviahd is, or was, an Alliance member. Her presence might be helpful in convincing them we're willing to look past race. And hey, her Common might even be better than mine." _Jandali looked back up at her with a toothy, unfriendly smile. "_What, are you worried something might happen?"_

Zuri gave him a calculating glance, then replied smoothly, "_I don't know what you're talking about. But fine, Jandali. If you want to take the girl, take her. She's mostly useless here anyways."_

That wasn't true. Since she'd begun to master the use of her gun, Meviahd had been just as productive as any other member of the hunting party. Jandali knew this, but he said nothing. After a moment Zuri waved her hand at him and remarked condescendingly, "_You are dismissed, Jandali."_

He didn't rise to her bait, slipping quietly from her office in the village center with nothing but a courteous nod. It wouldn't help to argue with her. In a few days, he would be free.

* * *

Four days later Jandali found himself on the bruise-purple shores near Auberdine, staring out across the overcast skies and inky waters. He had opted to make an early departure to wait for their boat. It was to be a small, private skiff sent from Azuremyst Isle, since the only nearby port was an Alliance dock. Presumably the vessel would have docked at the sandy expanse Jandali had found south of Auberdine hours earlier to prepare, but the draenei ship was yet to show.

Every so often a large, two-masted transport cruiser would stray by and Jandali would tense, expecting them to turn into the little shore. So far every on had passed without issue. It was extremely unlikely he would be caught, but Jandali ducked into the bushes everytime, just in case. He'd be damned if he would be caught by the enemy again.

The sun had reached the middle of the sky. At least, Jandali thought it had. It was hard to see through the thick cover of clouds. Solid proof came soon after when, arriving on time, came the sound of creatures moving through the underbrush. Three bobbing raptor heads became visible through the twigs and bushes.

At the head of the party was Ridia. She was riding a purple raptor, which loped gently along without hurry. The troll healer seemed somewhat nervous, looking around her every so often to peer between the dead trees. Ridia was a little younger than Jandali. She had been pretty in her prime, but was now starting to look her age. Her green hair was shot through with grays, like Jandali knew his own was. Ridia wouldn't have been his first choice for the party. She was too jumpy.

Behind her came Majir, seated loosely on his mount. He was riding a Ravasaur, one of the poison-skinned raptors from Un'Goro crater. It was a feat to build immunity to their poison, one Jandali suspected Majir would take great zeal in accomplishing.

The hunter was involved in an engaging conversation with Meviahd. Seated easily atop a tall turquoise raptor, the elf looked as if she'd spent her entire life riding the creatures. She took a hand from the reigns to gesture around her and towards Auberdine, and Majir smiled.

Jandali cleared his throat pointedly as they neared and dismounted. Ridia nodded respectfully to him, and Majir even gave a slight jut of his chin. For Meviahd's part, she offered Jandali a broad, sincere smile and he felt his taut nerves mysteriously soothe.

"Our ship was supposed to be here a few hours ago, but he hasn't shown." Jandali announced. He was using Common, mostly for Meviahd's benefit, though it didn't hurt to start now, "Ah give it another few hours, then maybe we pull out."

"Why, you think we gonna be ambushed, old man?" Majir demanded suddenly, chuckling deep in his throat. "Think they got wind ah our secret plans? You paranoid now you lost your tusk, mon?"

For a moment, Jandali could only stare at him. It had sounded almost like a joke, the kidding way Majir had said it. But Jandali was greeted with a wolfish, vicious smile, just on the edge of a challenge. Even Meviahd looked up at the hunter, her brows knit and an uncertain frown twisting her mouth.

Ridia coughed awkwardly and Jandali sucked in a hot, red breath. He could taste anger building acid-like in the back of his throat. Majir didn't seem to notice the sudden strain, looking over Jandali's shoulder and saying, "'Ey, think maybe that's our guy?"

It was indeed the draenei ship, coming slowly across the inky waters. Jandali turned to watch it, clenching his fists so hard he could feel the half-moon crescents of his fingernails pressing into the palms of his hand. In, one...two... Out, one... two. In a few measured breaths the shaman had himself under control enough to break into a well-accented bout of Draenei as the ship drew near.

"_Well met, brother, sister. We thought you wouldn't make it. It is good to see this is not so."_

The ship was a small one, manned by two middle-aged draenei, a male and female. They seemed immediately at ease when he spoke to them in their language, and began to chat amiably in Draenei with him as they docked the ship. For the time being, Jandali chose to forget about Majir. He would take care of the problem later.

"_My apologies, brother. We were waylaid at Auberdine for hours. A ship sailing by us demanded we accompany them to the docks there. They were well armed." _The male said, shivering a little and casting a look up-shore to where Auberdine was not visible through the trees. Jandali's group began to load into the boat, leaving behind their mounts so that the clever beasts would find their way back home.

"_The elves said the docks were closed,"_ The female continued, "_And they sent us back to Velen to ask that he see them. They are not letting anyone into the village. They asked us questions: what we were doing, where we were going. But I do not think they knew, only that something strange is happening there. We had to make this trip a bit more roundabout to avoid them again."_

They had been speaking Draenei the entire time, leaving Ridia, Meviahd, and Majir in the dark. Still, the nervous atmosphere had been picked up on, and they piled into the docked boat and set off. Jandali quickly gave his crew a summary of what had happened in Common. The other two trolls seemed mostly unconcerned, though Ridia's nervous cough became more frequent the few times she thought she may have seen elven ships in the distance.

Meviahd was more deeply effected. Once or twice Jandali thought he saw her squinting into the fog where the little grey town would be. The frown she'd had on shore had stayed on her lips, thinning them. Did she have family there? Friends? Jandali pushed it into the back of his mind.

Speaking in Common now, the female draenei said, "Nobundo regrets to inform you that, due to the urgency of the elves' request, he will be occupied today. However, he has offered you two suites in the Caregiver Center, and promises to make room for you in his schedule tomorrow. You will have full, protected access to the city, of course."

Jandali fought to keep the smile off of his face. He nod gratefully to the two draenei and thanked them in a calm, diplomat's voice. Internally, he celebrated. A night away from Zuri would do him good. Granted, it was technically a night on the job. But it was a relatively responsibility free one.

After about an hour of quiet sailing they docked at Valaar's Berth. There the little party departed from the dreanei sailors and were treated to a ride in a caravan pulled by two massive purple elekks. The cart was lushly decorated and comfortable, and the ride there was a leisurely one. It was a power play, Jandali knew, looking out across the beautiful turquoise waters and delicate pthalo branches of Azuremyst Isle. Step one to welcoming your guests is impressing your guests. They're less likely to assassinate your king if your land is beautiful, and your arms plentiful.

Sure enough, they arrived at the Exodar and were escorted through a series of dour guards, mostly paladins weilding crystalline maces and wearing slate-blank expressions. The city must have been alerted of the arrival of it's guests. As a capitol, the crashed ship always looked rather unpresentable. There were still bits of the entrance path that had been crunched and were yet to be fixed, as well as a few walls opened and spilling earth. But Jandali also appreciated the calm that could be found within the Exodar. There was a serene sort of peace that settled over the whole place.

As they made their way to the Caregiver Center the surrounding civilians were careful not to let their curious looks linger too long. Jandali found the draenei a polite and often friendly race, if not a bit bland. At least it was easier than playing the middle man to humans and orcs, both prone to violent outbursts.

At the inn they were greeted personally by the innkeeper, Caregiver Breel. The cordial draenei showed them to their rooms, two massive suites with common rooms, small kitchenette accompaniments, and two massive bedrooms each. Jandali breathed a sigh of relief. He had been hoping for bedrooms like these, where the door could be locked from the inside. He'd been dreading having to sleep in the same room as Majir.

After the Caregiver had left, Jandali settled gratefully into a puffy armchair. His hip still ached. He'd brought his staff with him, both as a defense and as a walking stick to aid with his limp. Trying to conceal it. The draenei were not usually aggressive diplomats, but avoiding any sign of weakness couldn't be a bad thing.

Meviahd entered the room a few minutes later, knocking politely and standing to attention when let inside. She was alert, but not nervous. Out of the whole party it was the elf that seemed most at ease.

Perhaps it was her race that gave her the courage. For all intensive purposes she was surrounded by allies in the draenei. Not that Meviahd seemed to be relying on it. From behind, she might have even been mistaken from a troll. She had been given a few outfits by the shaman of the village for her daily hunting, and one she wore now was strictly traditional garb. It consisted of a long kilt, slit at the side up her thighs, and a low-slung, boat-necked leather shirt. Both were woven with charms and feathers and embellished with bright threads. Someone had tied a few wooden and glass beads in her hair.

"You have been here before, yes girlie?"

Meviahd smiled a little, "Am I that obvious?"

"You barely looked around when we entered the city. At least if the ship wasn't impressing you, you'd be scoping out potential exits in case of emergency. Like a good soldier, eh?"

"I did a cycle here once. Nothing special, but I know the place."

"Good. You're gonna do something for me. I want to find out the public's opinion of this treaty. Of course, the Jandali himself is a bit obvious. But some little elf sitting at the back of the bar..."

She narrowed her eyes at him slightly, her grin pointing.

"If you take out the 'little', then it's a deal."

"Then go, some elf. And don't get caught."

"A shame Ah can't be goin' too." Majir appeared suddenly at the doorway to his room. Jandali had almost forgotten he was there. The hunter leaned his wiry body against the doorframe and gave Meviahd a silky smile. "Be careful, mon. The blue-bloods can be a handful, providin' ya piss 'em off right."

For a moment Meviahd's face blanked. Jandali had seen the same careful, controlled faces on the Sentinels that guarded the elven cities. Finally, Meviahd gave him a crooked half-smile, backing out the room. She also threw Jandali a salute so crisp he wasn't sure if it was a joke or not.

After she'd shut the door behind her, Majir let loose a low whistle. Without looking at Jandali he announced, "_I tell ya, old man. I hate to see her leave, but I love to watch her go. That is one filly I wouldn't mind takin' for a ride."_

"_Excuse me?"_

Turning his head lazily, Majir caught the shaman's red eyes with his own lidded ones. The hunter's oily grin widened and he studied his fingernails as he said, "_I know, she doesn't have tits like a troll, but all you really need's a handful."_

Jandali's fists shook at his side. Slowly, he said, "_Don't talk about her like that."_

An innocent frown replaced Majir's grin. As if hurt, he said,_ "I thought this was the men's room, maybe you and I could chat a little. Get to know each other. Like soldiers, huh? Unless, of course, you mean specifically don't talk about _her_..."_

"_No. I'm just not going to put up with that kind of lewd bullshit. You _will not_ talk like that in front of me."_

For a moment they only stared in silence. Jandali had seen it before: two trolls angry enough to jump on top of each other, long arms flailing, ripping at anything they could reach. The first thought that struck him was 'Let him try.' And the second thought whispered, in a voice far more bitter than the first, 'He is far stronger, and younger too.'

Majir spat to the side and shook his head. He said, "_She let me tie those beads in her hair before we left. I'm not too worried."_

Jandali sucked in a breath to deny it again, but Majir was already out the room. The hunter slammed the heavy wooden door behind him. The sound echoed through the halls of Exodar and easily shattered the quiet in the inn.

Jandali fell back into one of the couches, placing a hand gingerly over the bandages at his hip.

"_I'm not worried, either," _He said stubbornly to the empty air.


	14. Chapter 13

As always, everyone, I am so thankful for your reviews and such. I wished I could get this chapter out a little sooner, but I had finals in school and they really hit me hard. However, due to some financial reasons I'll be taking the next year off of school, and I'm hoping to make this a good pet project for me to concentrate some energy into.

Also! Fallacy has done some more fanart for me (korinacaffeine(dot)deviantart(dot)com/art/beads-160737310 Replace the dots!). I could not be more flattered. I can't even believe someone's doing fanart for something I wrote.

So read and enjoy. P.S. This chapter is super long D:

Meviahd bought a cloak with the few handfuls of silver she had.

It was dark purple, deep and rich as a velvet shadow. Throwing it over her shoulders, Meviahd felt the familiarity of it. The weight on her shoulders, the subterfuge air, all of it came to her as easily as it had before.

She found a tavern in town that seemed well liked. It was stop one of two; Meviahd knew you couldn't judge the worth of a coin unless you'd checked both sides of it. This side of the coin was a bright tavern, lit warmly and occupied by cheerful, smiling patrons. The bar maids were all polite, and the place seemed to be where the city guards spent some of their off hours.

Meviahd took a seat in the back and pulled her hood up. She measured her breaths and began to feel the dark curl up over her skin. While not entirely hidden from view, any eyes that found her would most likely turn away quickly. Between her hood and the shadows, Meviahd seemed entirely unapproachable, and even the bar maids stayed away from her.

For the better part of an hour she listened to the conversations in Common around her. Some were casual talks about the state of the city, the Alliance, and similar topics. More common were draenei speculating about the closed elven docks at Auberdine. Mostly, the conversation didn't turn towards the troll shamans. The commotion of Auberdine seemed to have overshadowed their arrival.

Meviahd did catch a few snippets of conversations about them. One was between two grizzled older shamans, one of whom remarked that 'if the tusks truly wanted to play nice' he couldn't see the problem in it. Another pair of draenei guards, to Meviahd's embarrassment, were wondering 'where the cute elf girl' went to. She pulled her hood up around her ears more and left soon after.

Her second stop was a far seedier tavern. The Mage's Left Eye was a dim-lit bar with a barkeeper who, indeed, wore an eyepatch over his right eye. He was wiping a scummy cup with an even dirtier rag, and looking around the surprisingly crowded bar suspiciously. Meviahd had a hard time slipping in mostly unnoticed. By the time she'd settled into a corner she was already trying to rethink her situation. The Eye was the type of tavern where she might hear the information she needed, but it was dangerous.

Surprisingly, the majority of the sparse conversations in the Mage's Eye were about Strangelthorn Jungle. Meviahd listened with fascination to a pair of sailors on the far side of the room talking about the strict measures being taken in Booty Bay.

"No trolls," One said with a little laugh, "Not like here. When I was there a week ago they were rounding them all up and moving them, regardless of if they were showing symptoms or not."

"I hope none of the ones here are diseased." The second sailor tossed the rest of his drink down, "I heard they're thinking about barring 'em from Ratchet too. Whatever it is, it's spreading fast."

The two sailors left and for a short while there was very little to listen to. Then a fight broke out between the two patrons seated in front of Meviahd. They were older, veteran types, with various battle wounds and severe faces.

"Let them come?" One snarled in common, "Should we forgive them all so easily? There will be orcs there. Should we offer them open arms?"

"We should not be so blind, brother," the second draenei said more evenly, "They come to us for the good of shamans. To share knowledge."

"There is nothing they know that we do not." Spat the first, raising from his seat to leave. He looked up suddenly, right into Meviahd's face. She felt the pull of that look, the irreversible realization that he had figured out who she was.

His eyes narrowed.

Meviahd felt a tug on her arm. Gently at first, then more forcefully, it nearly pulled her from her seat. She looked down to find the gnarled, club-like hand of a Broken draenei. He gave her another tug with one of those huge, muscled arms, his face urgent. Meviahd stood, unsure, and the Broken turned his thin face to her attacker.

The draenei veteran was looking at him now, his eyes burning. Finally he smashed his glass to the table, leaving the tavern like a storm passing. His companion, still seated at the table, gave Meviahd and the Broken an apologetic look.

His grip tightened around her arm and the Broken pulled her from the tavern. The barkeep watched her with his one good eye, but made no move to stop them. The Broken's strength was immense. Had Meviahd wanted to, she would not have been able to escape him. He wrestled her into the side of the building, and Meviahd felt panic rise into her throat. Suddenly she was not in control.

"Stupid girl," the Broken snapped. His voice was deep and scratchy, like some dark creature moving across a cave floor, "Should know better than to be poking her nose."

His grip slackened and Meviahd yanked her wrist away. Frowning, he took another step towards her, pushing her further into the side of the tavern.

"I would have been fine."

"Going to attack him?" It was hard to read the creature's face, but Meviahd thought she saw it actually smile.

She considered the creature for a moment. By all standards, he was threatening her. But the exchange didn't seem frightening now that he was no longer holding her arm. Finally returning his smug look with one of her own, Meviahd replied, "What kind of diplomat would I be then? I would have debated with him. I am, after all, an enemy turned friend myself."

Was it amusement she saw in the Broken's face? It stepped away from her, a reedy laugh scraping from his throat.

"She has a quick, sharp tongue." He said, "Tell the Jandali, Agroora wishes him the very best of luck."

He was gone then, turning his hunched back to her and lumbering away with surprising speed. Meviahd watched him go without calling after him. She felt as if she'd passed some sort of test. When she returned to the inn, she took off her cloak and carried it under her arm, nodding graciously at the draenei she passed.

When she returned to the shaman's room there was no sign of Majir or Jandali anywhere. The only clue was a door in the common room of the inn that Meviahd had not noticed before. It was open; a green-blue cloth hanging from the wall next to it blew gently. Meviahd poked her head through and found herself on an outdoor balcony. Furnished tastefully, there was cushioned chair and several pillows the ground. The landscape beyond was the quiet of Azuremyst sleeping.

"Your friend Agroora smiles fortune upon you," Meviahd announced.

Jandali didn't look up from the book he was reading. Seated at a strange angle on the one long chaise armchair, he balanced the little tome on one bent leg with the other tucked beneath him. The shaman was braiding random groups of his dreadlocks over his shoulder and tying them off with little bits of twine.

"Agroora does not smile," he told her in an almost bored voice, "He makes a strange face at you until you are uncomfortable, and the joy dis brings him make it _look_ like he's smiling."

He moved over slightly so that Meviahd could sit next to him on the chaise. The shaman never appeared to stop reading, pausing every so often to lick his fingers and turn the page while they spoke.

"You met Agroora. You must'a been doing something dangerous, girlie." He rolled his maroon eyes towards her quickly, then looked back down at the book. "I never said do anything dangerous."

"Nothing bad," Meviahd assured him. She shifted and pulled her crossed legs underneath her, "I did what you said. The opinions are a mixed bag. Some are for it, some aren't. What's going on in Stranglethorn isn't helping..."

"Oh, and what did you hear?"

"That they were forcing trolls from Booty Bay, and thinking about barring them from Ratchet as well."

Jandali froze with his hand halfway to turning a page. After a second he closed the book and placed it in his lap, frowning down on it.

"I had not heard..."

"A sailor who was in port last week was telling a friend. I'd heard rumors back in town, but I hadn't thought it was this bad."

"No." Jandali tied off the last of his braids and placed his hands across his legs. He eyes seemed far away. "It was contained in the hostile tribes there, last I was knowin'. It's probably been brought into the population, if they afraid of any troll spreading it."

After a moment he pressed a finger to his temple. "Must be pretty bad then. People dying from it."

"That's what it sounded like."

They fell silent. Watching Jandali from the corner of her eyes, Meviahd tried to decipher the unreadable look on his face. Fear?

"Did you see Majir?" he asked suddenly.

"No. Wasn't I not supposed to?"

Jandali nodded absently. When Meviahd broke the following quiet reluctantly, her was voice that of someone picking their words very carefully.

"About this morning... He has a strange sense of humor. Sometimes I don't get it either. I don't think me meant anything personal."

Jandali just shrugged. With an unpleasant start, Meviahd realized she'd been staring at the stub of his tusk unconsciously. She looked away quickly, pulling her legs up to her chest and resting her chin on her knees. Jandali sighed, and though she didn't see it, she could imagine his face from that deep, lonesome sound.

"You should stay away from him." He said.

Meviahd felt her hackles rise. She turned a bitter-eyed stare on the troll, and Jandali's chest puffed.

"Don't look at me like that," he said, "I'm being serious. I'm telling you, I don't trust him."

Meviahd felt her words building at the back of her throat. She knew they were poison before she even said them. But something stubborn inside her only saw Jandali's disapproving eyes and stern frown, and she had to drive him away.

"What, are you trying be my dad now? You're old enough." She snapped.

The troll stood immediately after she said it, unsteady on his feet. His face was pulled tight in something that might have been anger, or it might have been frustration.

"How like you, Meh'vi," was all he said, almost so quietly she didn't hear it. Then he was out the door.

For a few moments Meviahd sat by herself, silent. She was waiting for him to come back, though she knew he wouldn't. She'd made him too angry. Feeling annoyed with herself now, Meviahd flipped open the book he'd left on the seat beside her.

A medical journal, old by the looks of it, filled with gruesome color illustrations of diseases on chests, hands, feet, faces.

Meviahd stole it, though she couldn't explain why she did as she tucked it under her arm. Jandali didn't come looking for it. Later, Meviahd would not mention the little tome, and Jandali would not mention their argument. It was as if it never happened.

Three months after the Jandali's successful meeting with Nobundo, draenei had come to the village.

They had arrived two days previously to great excitement. Six draenei, four women, two men. Out of them, three had elected to stay behind and live with the trolls. They were not the only ones. Since Meviahd had returned from Azuremyst, a number of tauren and a handful of orcs had come to join them as well. The village was slowly filling with promise.

That night on the Barrens was a hot one. The air was thick and muggy to breath, alive with buzzing insects and birds still chirping at the recently set sun. A group of trolls were playing drums, maracas, and several types of flutes. At the center of the village a fire had been lit, burning taller than Meviahd, and around it sweating bodies danced. Meviahd had saw an orc step on one of the draenei woman's hooves, but he'd bowed to her and offered an apology. Spirits were running high.

Their celebration was the naming of the shaman village. For it, the trolls had prepared a lavish feast from the available resources. The tables were groaning under the weight of several suckling boars, bowls of candied cactus fruit, platters of vegetables and Plainstrider meat, huge bloody kodo steaks, and even a plate of dark, pungent lion meat that Meviahd had tried a nibble of.

The village would be known as Jin'Jeda. Sitting in his yard on a nicer day, Meviahd had asked Jandali what it meant. He'd had a tough time explaining it, tasting the beginning syllables of a few words before realizing they were not the ones he wanted. Finally he placed a hand flat against the earth, then raised it in a gesture that spanned the expanse of land around him.

"'Jin' is a chief," he said, "And 'Jeda' is all of this. And it means that this is what we of the village answer to."

Meaning the earth, of course. Nature. Meviahd understood it then.

The naming ceremony had sparked a sense of community in the village, from what Meviahd could see. She could feel it bubbling up in her own throat: that warmth that seemed to come from no other source. It was good to feel a society around her again.

Across the fire from her, Meviahd could see Jandali tucking himself carefully onto one of the puffy throw pillows that had been laid out. He seemed to be alone; Meviahd had seen Zuri at his side earlier, but only formal words had been passed between the two. The Antu'zul had gone from harassing Jandali to acting coldly towards him, though he didn't seem to mind. He was watching the dancers, a smile on his face. Jandali raised the bottle of wine he was carrying to his lips.

Meviahd sucked in her breath and felt the tickle of exhilaration rise in her throat. On impulse, she wove through the gathered crowd and dropped heavily onto a pillow next to Jandali. He startled, then glanced over at her with lidded eyes.

"Having fun, girlie?" He was pretending to be grouchy, but doing it poorly.

"Dance with me," Meviahd yelled above the din of drums and flutes, leaning in closer to him. Jandali just snorted, frowning and rolling his eyes at her.

"Go away," he yelled back, "My hip still hurts, and I am too old."

"You're not that old."

"Old enough to be your father."

After he said it she could tell it was a raw wound. Meviahd bit her lip for a moment, then leaned in closer so that she could say close to his ear in Darnassian, "_Sometimes we say things, not because we mean them, but because we don't know how to say what we're really thinking._"

When he turned towards her again there was something strange about the look on his face. Expectant? Anxious? She saw for a moment a softness in his eyes, but it was gone just as quickly as it had come. Something had caught the shaman's attention. His head snapped to the sky. A second after he heard it, Meviahd caught the sound too.

Wings. Panicked wings. Wings pushing air as hard as the could, flying jaggedly, careening wildly. Something big. Meviahd knew that she'd heard those wings hundreds and hundreds of times before.

Devi Devi.

Meviahd was on her feet in an instant, running in the direction of the sound, crashing through the rest of the partygoers. The night was too black, and the fires below too bright to see the sky. But Meviahd could hear those wing beats, and she knew Devi Devi was hurt.

He was flying towards the outskirts of the town, still far above them, but coming down swiftly. Meviahd's legs burned and her chest was aching from the sudden strain. The ground she'd covered was impressive. Jandali had tried to follow her, but he was far, far behind. Heartbeat pounding in her ears, Meviahd looked up and caught the flash of feathers far above her.

And below that, three figures. Twenty feet away from them, Meviahd saw their faces illuminated suddenly by a crackle of lightning that blossomed in one of their hands. A troll and two draenei, standing on the road together next to a few of the outer ring of houses. Meviahd recognized Zuri's bright orange hair even from the distance.

The draenei holding the lightning looked up, resolution and a bit of apprehension in his face. He raised his hand, blue sparks crackling up and down his arm. Aimed it at the feathered wings struggling to the ground. Meviahd felt the scream rising from her throat, but she couldn't hear it over the blood pounding in her ears. She was an animal again, panicking, acting only on instinct.

The rogue was on the group before they'd even realized she was running for them. She caught the look of fear in Zuri's face. The troll had seen the silver flash of Meviahd's drawn blades. Zuri opened her mouth, wide and round, raising her arms as if to shield herself. But it was the draenei shaman Meviahd was aimed for.

He barely had time to react before Meviahd slashed at him. One swift motion, blade singing in the air, and Meviahd's dagger had opened a long, wide gash on his chest. Blue blood gushed from the wound's angry mouth, saturating the front of his ceremonial cloth vestments instantly.

Overhead, the draenei's lightning shot off into the night, and the frantic sound of the wings grew further and further into the distance.

Time slowed. There was a second that felt like a lifetime in which the wounded draenei's eyes met Meviahd's. She saw the shock and pain on his face, and the way his mouth went slack. His legs crumpled underneath him and he hit the ground heavily. Dead body heavy.

Somewhere far away, Meviahd was aware that the female draenei was screaming, dropping to her knees beside the prone male. Somewhere far away, Meviahd was aware that the drums had stopped, that the flutes had stopped, that Zuri was yelling and starting to give orders to some of the village residents and guards that were moving in around them. But the feeling of being miles off, numb, would not shake from her.

A pair of trolls wrenched her arms behind her back and forcing the daggers from her hands. More were screaming, moving the limp draenei from the ground and rushing him off, or gathering around Meviahd in an accusatory circle. Across from her, Zuri was yelling unintelligibly, gesturing wildly at the sky.

Meviahd could hear none of it. She was still disjointed, attuned only to the uncomfortable feeling of blood drying on her hands. Her eyes passed unseeing over the crowd until she saw, finally, Jandali's horrified face.

She could only offer him a remorseful, crooked grin, mouthing a word to him in Darnassian.

"Sorry."


	15. Chapter 14

Jandali was called to the second meeting of their discussion of the matter of the elf, but he was not called to the first.

In the first, they discussed what the final ruling on Meviahd's crimes would be, and decided on her punishment as per the laws of the village set down days prior.

The ruling was execution.

In the second meeting, Jandali was invited to vote on the means of her death (hanging or firing squad), and what would be done to speak to the people of the village about it. With rage, he read the formal invitation that had been slid under his front door. Zuri's signature on the bottom of it was sharp and precise. Jandali felt disgust rise sourly in the back of his throat.

Meviahd had been held in a makeshift prison on the other side of the village for the past three days. Jandali had tried to visit her twice, but he was barred each time by a pair of Zuri's inner guard, then a few of Majir's hunters. He'd only heard yesterday that they planned to put her to the noose.

At first he considered not attending the meeting at all, in form of protest. But there he was, dropping woodenly into his seat at the council between Ridia and the head alchemist. Zuri took her place at the head of the table calmly, not looking in his direction. She was well put together tonight. Even Jandali had to admit she'd been an excellent choice for the Antu'zul.

Zuri cleared her throat, still pointedly looking down the center of the table. Next to her, the scribe began to write.

"We are gathered today to discuss the matter of the elf's execution. It will set a precedent for future crimes of this nature for years to come. Think hard about today's decisions." She began to outline the ideals a public execution would reflect, as well as what a private execution would mean. The whole time Jandali could only hear the rush of the blood in his ears. No one was going to help him, he already knew that. The only one at the assembly he might have been able to count on was Majir, but the hunter seemed unconcerned. He was sitting loosely, watching Zuri with half-lidded eyes. His face was almost one of disinterest.

"We will vote now," Zuri announced, "On the matter of a hanging or a firing squad. Those in favor of the noose, raise your hands."

The table shifted and a the majority of the group raised their hands. Majir clicked his tongue against his teeth and raised his own hand half-heartedly. His face didn't change from it's indifferent expression the entire time.

Jandali didn't move, his hands both clenched on his knees. He was staring at Zuri, but she still hadn't made eye contact.

"And all those in favor of the squad."

Less hands this time. Jandali still kept his hands on the table. Beside him, the head alchemist jiggled uncomfortably in her seat. Ridia cleared her throat in that awkward cough he remembered bothering him so much. At the sound of it, Zuri finally turned his way.

"The Jandali did not vote yet." She said evenly. He knew her well enough to pick up the danger in the back of her voice, but doubted that the council had heard it.

"No, he did not," Jandali replied. No one around the table answered this, only fixing him in place with their eyes like sharp pins. Sucking in a breath, Jandali growled, "I agree with neither option. This is ridiculous, Zuri-"

"You will address me with respect." She said icily. Jandali sucked on his teeth, then pressed on.

"Antu'zul. She was defending the Horsehawk, you and I know that, and everyone else here could be taught to see it. The draenei isn't going to die. Execution is a punishment too severe for such-"

"You were here when we voted on the laws. I believe you were even the one to suggest the death sentence, were you not? Giza, if you would please..."

Beside Zuri, the scribe began to ruffle through a folder of parchment at her feet, finally procuring a sheet of paper. She read aloud from it in a clear voice, "On the meeting of decisions on laws concerning the punishment for violence between villagers, especially those of different races and alignments, the Jandali was recorded to have said, 'Nothing short of a death penalty would be adequate. We must show these people that violence here will not be tolerated in any shape or form.' He was then recorded as having voted affirmatively for the death penalty, although it was stated by the Jandali that he hoped it would never be necessary."

While the scribe spoke, Zuri watched him. Jandali was struck suddenly by how distant they'd grown in a short amount of time. When he'd first arrived at the construction site that would be Jin'Jeda, he'd been completely overjoyed to see a familiar face. Anything was better than the human faces that haunted his dreams, or the increasingly confusing attention from Meviahd. But the elf, alongside Zuri's position as the Antu'zul and her progressively aggressive advances toward him, seemed to be driving a wedge through them. Jandali had tried to be patient with her, but even his most gentle rebukes were met with more and more bitterness.

She was just like her sister, Jandali realized with a start.

"I still refuse to vote." He said.

"Then the vote is decided. The method of the execution will be a hanging." Zuri replied curtly, turning away from him, "And we now must vote on the question of a public execution, or a more subtle one."

"Count my vote now, then," Jandali announced, standing stiffly, looking at no one. Anger clotted in his throat. "I vote for a public execution. May you all see what you have done."

No one attempted to stop him from leaving the room. As Jandali passed the table, he finally caught Majir's attention.

The hunter gave him a wink.

"Are you drunk?" That was Zuri's first question when she answered her door. It was early in the morning, or maybe it was very late at night. The sun had yet to rise over the golden plains. Jandali couldn't sleep, and finally he'd made the walk between his house and Zuri's. He beat her door ceaselessly until she came to answer it.

"No," he said, "No, I'm not drunk." Truthfully he'd had half a bottle of spirits some hours earlier to take the edge off his thoughts, but she didn't need to know that.

"I need to talk to you. Just you and me, no council. Please, this is ridiculous. There's no reason anyone has to die here."

She was silent for a long time. Uncomfortably so. Jandali squirmed under the intense, roving look she gave him. Finally, she leaned back against the doorframe of her house.

"Tah'zir, if you think I'm going to abuse my power so that you can get your bones jumped, you outta your mind."

"That's not how it is."

Zuri laughed bitterly. "No? You think I don't see the looks you give her, but I do. I gotta be stupid to let her slide now."

"What looks, woman? You're imagination. You'd let her die for that?"

"She knew the rules like everyone else. She hung herself. She is an example for future inhabitants of Jin'Jeda, who will know there will be no violence." She said the last part hollowly, as if reciting a list of chores. Zuri looked sideway out across the Barrens, her lips pursing, "Then again, you could do something for me. If you were to try a little harder..."

"There's nothing there anymore, Zuri. I told you that." He paused and said quietly, "You remind me too much of her."

"Then you should not have drove her to her death." Zuri shut the door seconds before Jandali's fist smashed into it. She'd known what his reaction would be. He howled, pounding the thick wood and twisting the knob viciously, but Zuri locked it.

Had she not closed the door, his knuckles would have buried themselves deep into her snotty nose. Just as well. Jandali would be no help if he was in the prison himself. The troll attempted to even out his ragged breathing, counting between lungfuls of air. Then he steeled himself again, limping down from Zuri's porch.

There was one more hope, but it wasn't a lot.

The sun was rising over the lip of the earth when Jandali reached Majir's hut. The hunter had his own house, though it was smaller and slightly more primitive than the other buildings of Jin'Jeda. Surprisingly, Majir was awake, seated in one of a couple of wooden chairs placed on the side of his house that faced the plains. When Jandali approached, the hunter's scarlet raptor emerged from behind the hut, hissing.

"Enough, Rojo," the raptor responded immediately to his master's voice, closing it's needle-toothed mouth and coming to stand beside Jandali. It was nearly as tall as his shoulder, and it pushed it's massive head into Jandali's side. The shaman rested a hand on the top of it's muzzle. He pet it gently and the raptor thrummed under his hand.

"I'm surprised, old man. Usually a body don't go and put his hands near the raptor's mouth before he knows if it gonna bite or not. The Jandali doesn't think much of his own health." Majir pulled a few thin wrap leaves and a leather packet of tobacco from the pocket of his loose pants. He began to roll himself a cigarette.

"Sit," he indicated the chair next to him and Jandali dropped into it wearily. Majir finished his cigarette and began to roll another, offering it to Jandali when it was finished. After some hesitation, Jandali took it from him and lit it with a match the hunter gave him.

"Didn't peg ya' a smoker, Jandali."

"I used to be. Not anymore."

"Well, except for now." Mair laughed a little, leaning back against his chair. He lit the cigarette in his mouth and breathed, "You'd be here about the elf, of course."

Jandali nodded, "How could you sit there and play along with them? Zuri is only following through because she does not want to appear weak."

"No, but maybe. More, little zufli is following through to be gettin' rid of the competition."

"Don't call her that." Jandali growled. Some female shamans even preferred the term zufli, now that they'd made it their own, but the way Majir said it made it obvious that it was meant as an insult. Majir just shrugged lazily, draping a hand across his raptor's head. Jandali continued, "Maybe you're right. But you could help me. If it were you and I arguin' for her, we might have a better chance."

The cigarette was putting a dull edge on his sharp nerves. Jandali inhaled deeply and watched Majir. The hunter appeared to be thinking, scratching the purple stubble on the end of his long chin and considering. Finally he shook his head.

"Head hunter ain't got no power here, Jandali. You the one with all the weight. Maybe the Antu'zul is the last word here in Jin'Jeda, but I be knowin' for a fact that more trolls know about the Jandali than some village leader. You got more power than you think, Jandali, you just not usin' it to your advantage."

Majir sighed, "As for Mevi, I will say this. I like the girl, you seen me sniffin' after her for a few weeks. But I know I can do nothing for her right now. You become a soldier and you accept some of those things. The inevitable. When you're a soldier men an' women you consider your friends, they drop like stones around you. And tomorrow's another day full of it, ev'ry time. You gotta numb yourself to keep going. All you can do is hope they died beautifully."

"That's why I voted hanging," he finished, "Firing squad is how they used to execute cowards."

Jandali rose, feeling that the hunter had said his final piece. The shaman stubbed the end of his cigarette almost regretfully in the sand at his feet. Majir gave him a crooked smile and a half-hearted salute.

"Good luck, old man," the hunter called after him.

Two days later, on a day when grey storm clouds hung low over the Barrens like oppressive spirits, they strung the noose. Dull, heavy drum beats signified the gathering of the villagers of Jin'Jeda. They trickled from their houses like the last dregs of spring run-off, pooling around the high podium that had been temporarily built in the village center. Around it, the huts seemed to shrink away, and the noose rose higher than anything around for at least a twenty feet in radius. It looked like some unstoppable titan of old.

Jandali was running down one of the four cardinal streets that led to the center of Jin'Jeda. He was still about forty feet away, panting hard, feeling every nerve in his lungs begin to sear. The wound on his hip had been ripped open again, and it throbbed with every step. But Jandali ran.

More drums, faster ones, and they pulled Meviahd from the makeshift prison. In the distance, he could see them leading her. The guards had tied her hands behind her back.

She was still wearing the clothing she'd been wearing the night of the naming celebration, a feathered leather skirt and a shirt patterned with beads, though they were wrinkled now. Her hair was dirty and there was a small bruise on her cheek. But she held her head high. Unafraid.

Jandali hadn't realized how formidable she could look.

When they led her up the steps of the podium the crowd shifted. Maybe they were having second thoughts. Meviahd's eerily glowing eyes seemed alien, unearthly. She scanned the crowd slowly, like a person sleepwalking, and then she looked up at the noose.

Jandali hit the back of the crowd running. He began to struggle through the people in front of him, smashing limbs aside and yelling hoarsely. The commotion paused the executioner and Zuri, who had taken the podium as well. When Jandali looked up, Meviahd had turned her glowing eyes onto him, and he fancied he saw hope in them.

"Stop!" He commanded in Zandali. A circle opened around him as the trolls of Jin'Jeda stepped away. Chest heaving, Jandali raised his hands and yelled again, "Stop. She has been chosen."

A buzz ran through the crowd. Meviahd was still staring at him, but there was only confusion on her face. She could not understand the Zandali. Beside her, Zuri's eyes narrowed, and she watched Jandali warily.

"What do you mean, Jandali?" Zuri called.

"The spirits have finally come to me. They have chosen her. Meviahd Moonweaver is the next Jandali." The announcement spread like wildfire through the villagers. Jandali could feel blood running down his waist and pooling around his foot, but he continued, "She will come with me now for the first rite. These ancient laws must not be interrupted by the rules of this village."

Silence. Somewhere in the very back of the crowd a voice that sounded suspiciously like Majir's called, "Rejoice! The new Jandali has finally been chosen."

Troll culture was infectious, and it ran undiluted in the ancient bloodlines of all assembled. They could not resist. After a few stunned seconds, smatterings of clapping and cheering could be heard. Soon every troll in the center of Jin'Jeda had warmed from the cold the execution gripped them with.

Jandali took the podium slowly, step after bloody step, and came to stand behind Meviahd. He smiled at the lost, anxious expression on her face. Resting both hands gingerly on her shoulders, he held her steadily, facing the cheering crowd.

Beneath his hands her muscles tightened. Jandali wanted to tell her this wasn't going to be the hardest part. He wanted to tell her not to thank him yet. Instead, he whispered in her ear in Darnassian, "_I am sorry, too."_


	16. Chapter 15

Meviahd was silent the whole walk to Jandali's house. She concentrated on the feeling of his hands, surprisingly lightly calloused, still resting on her shoulders. She concentrated on the air pulling into her lungs. Jandali had told her to be silent, but she might have chosen it anyways, had it been her choice. There were no words she felt she could summon.

Meviahd had been unable to grasp her own death when they told her in the prison. It had really been the upper floor of one of the unfinished houses, with support ribbings lining the ceiling and the thin panes of glass not even put in it's boarded up windows yet.

Execution, they'd told her. By hanging. She was scared, but she would not let them hear her cries. Meviahd had allowed herself serenity as they led her down the road.

The thing was, you never really knew the cold chill of death until you were staring it in the face. And on the podium, looking up at the noose meant for her, Meviahd had felt it.

Jandali finally let go of her shoulders to dig a key from the pocket of his kilt and unlock the heavy deadbolt he'd put on his door. Meviahd was ushered inside. To her surprise, Jandali re-bolted the door behind them. She'd never seen him lock it when he was home, not even at night.

"You saved me. How?" Meviahd asked. Jandali frowned at her, and without a word he turned and limped off into the kitchen at the back of the house. It was only then that Meviahd noticed the trail of blood he left, and the dark stain spreading through the kilt at his hip. She followed him.

"What were you saying when you-"

"'Saved' is a strong choice of words." Jandali interrupted her. He pulled a knife from a rack on the kitchen table and sliced the bonds that held her wrists. Then he removed his shirt, cutting the bandages around his waist.

"Go get me the medical kit in the bathroom cabinet."

Meviahd did as she was told, though curiosity burned words on her tongue. She returned quickly, only to find Jandali already wrapping a fresh bandage back around his waist. He'd slung his kilt low on his hips to reach the bottom of the gash. Meviahd looked away quickly when she caught a glimpse of a little trail of wine-dark hairs below his navel.

"I remembered there was one in the kitchen, too." He tied it off neatly, sitting gingerly into his seat again without putting on his shirt. In the bright light of the kitchen she could see the dark circles under his eyes, and a crisscross of scars that lined his shoulders. The sawn-off stump of his tusk cast a dark shadow across his mouth.

Meviahd took the seat across from him and asked, her voice soft, "You saved my life. How?"

A strange look crossed Jandali's face and he said simply, "I told them the spirits had come to me, and they told me you were chosen as the next Jandali."

"The spirits..." Meviahd repeated, trailing off. Her heart quickened. She'd never been of the religious sort, when Elune seemed as far away as the bright moon in the sky. But her mother had been a deeply spiritual person. Meviahd could remember when she was a child, escaping her home to wander in the forests. She'd tried to spend time at the various shrines around Darnassus in the hopes of hearing spirit whispers. It had been at one of those shrines, deep in the woods, that Devi Devi had first found her.

"The spirits told you I was the next Jandali?"

A crooked smile crossed Jandali's lips. He laughed sourly, "No girlie, the spirits have never spoken a word to me."

"But you said-"

"Yes. And I lied. Just like my father did before me. I am a shaman, but a poor one. All my spells are just energy; the Spirit of the Wild is not careful with who uses it's magic. But otherwise they will not hear me. I've tried. That day the harpies attacked us, I tried to ask for a break in the rain, but they wouldn't answer. It might have saved a few souls, had we been able to see. Things might have happened differently."

His tone was incredibly bitter, as if he'd been letting the thought ferment in his mind for a long time. Meviahd felt lost, and her limbs were still liquid from standing under the noose. She licked her lips, and finally asked, "Please, explain it to me slowly. I'm shell shocked, I think. Tell me what's happening."

The bitter look left Jandali's face and was replaced momentarily with something softer. He leaned into the table towards her, clasping his hands in front of him.

"The custom of the Jandali is that the spirits of the shaman, the spirits of the elements, will come to the current Jandali and name him his successor. Usually this is someone the Jandali knows, and he takes this person in for the first rite, which is to contact each elemental spirit and thank them for their faith." Jandali sighed, "But my father was the Jandali before me. I never learned who he'd been told was the spirits' choice, but whoever it was, he ignored it. He nominated me in front of the entire tribe, and when I went with him for the first rite he told me the same thing I'm telling you now. He lied."

"For a long time I've known that the spirits would never come to me to tell me their nomination. I'm getting older and older each year, already older than most Jandalis' take their apprentices. Someday I was going to have to choose my own to train. And I chose you to save you."

"Thank you," Meviahd responded almost automatically. She meant her thanks, but she couldn't find anything else to say to his explanation. She hadn't had time to process everything yet. To her gratitude, Jandali laughed darkly again.

"Don't thank me yet. You've no idea what I've done. Being the Jandali is not like having a profession. It is just short slavery." He snorted, "The Jandali is at the beck and call of his superiors, the leader of the trolls, and now the leaders of the Horde. His time is not his own. And not to mention the years of intense training that are a prelude to his diplomacy. Every language must be at your disposal."

Jandali gave her a jagged sort of smile when he said, "The apprentice to the Jandali sleeps in his quarters, eats her meals with him, accompanies him in his travels, and spends nearly every waking minute with him learning the knowledge he and his predecessors have gained. They are inseparable. And when the time comes, and the Jandali steps down to allow his apprentice to take the mantle, she must be willing to give her life as a diplomat in service of her people. The Darkspear Trolls."

Meviahd swallowed. Her brain felt saturated, unable to soak in any more. Jandali must have caught the overwhelmed look on her face. In a moment of rare tenderness, he extended his hand across the table and rested it on one of hers.

"I chose you because I wanted to save your life, Meh'vi. But I never would have done so had I thought you couldn't handle it. You are one of the strongest people I know." He laughed again, but this one was more nervous. He was unsure of himself.

"As long as you think you can put up with me," he said, "Otherwise, your only other option is to leave here at once, and never return. Maybe I hold them off long enough for you to disappear somewhere remote, like Stranglethorn or Desolace. Otherwise, they will follow you."

Gravely, he said, "You are the one the spirits chose."

* * *

"An oracle?" Devi Devi demanded, the feathers along his neck rising. Meviahd could see the subtle signs of alarm in his avian face.

"Kind of," Meviahd said. She was looking down now, picking at dried blades of grass that were growing in scraggy tufts on the hill top. Earlier, Meviahd had noticed one of Devi Devi's long wing feathers, caught turquoise and orange in a tree branch, and she'd known to meet him where they'd agreed. The sun was setting low over the lip of the earth.

"But more of a politician."

"For _them._ And the troll, I still cannot see what he is to you that you follow him like a prophet." He silenced her protests with a glare and continued, "Maybe it is true that you have seen him gentle amongst his own people. But I can tell you what I remember of him as a beast, kidnapping you and dragging you halfway across the continent. That day you released me in the storm, when they had tied me, I remember the troll Jandali beating you black and blue in the mud. Do you ever think of it now?"

Meviahd rubbed at her jaw where a long forgotten bruise had already faded. Choosing her words carefully, she said, "Our different factions are often cruel to each other. It's sad on both sides. I forgive him the ignorance."

Devi Devi sucked in a breath. She could see him thinking deeply, though she couldn't tell about what. Some part of him felt far away from her now.

"By the standards of his people, Meviahd, he is much older than you."

"It's not like that." Her fingernails cut into her palms.

"And he would die hundreds, thousands of years before you."

"It's _not_ like that."

"You assume I refer to it so quickly, the thought must occupy a space somewhere in your mind." When that silenced her momentarily, Devi Devi said, "You are an adult, Meviahd. It is your choice which path of life you walk. Even if it is a dangerous one, even a stupid one, I cannot tell you that you have no right to it."

"Will you stop speaking to me?" She looked up at him and he must have seen the way that scared her. His bird's face shifted into something Meviahd knew to consider a gentle smile.

"No," he said, "Even though you are sometimes a stubborn, disagreeable child, I cannot leave you by yourself."

Devi Devi paused speaking to stretch his wings. Meviahd saw the flash of white bandages at the base of one of them. Earlier, the hippogryph had told her his half of the story. That night, at the naming ceremony of Jin'Jeda, Devi Devi had been held in Auberdine. He told her the city had closed two days previously, both to villagers entering and villagers leaving. It was, more or less, a quarantine. Auberdine had been forced to isolate due to an order from Darnassus and the Alliance itself.

The hippogryph had tried to escape. He would not be held in Auberdine against his will. But much to his surprise, the guards of Auberdine had met his escape with the harshest of measures. They'd fired upon him. Shot arrows at a hippogryph, one of their most sacred creatures, because he'd tried to escape the quarantine. A couple had hit him, and in panic, Devi Devi had made an emergency flight to the closest place he knew someone could help him.

"I was just wings in the night, it is no wonder the draenei feared me. You cannot blame him." He'd gotten his wounds taken care of by the druids of the Cenarion Circle in Feralas, then come back to her. He had no where else to go. Darnassus would no longer take him for fear he'd brought something with him from the elven docking town.

That was because Auberdine was infected. The same infection that had spread through the harpies; the same infection that had spread through the trolls. Devi Devi told her that the sore-flecked sick begged for mercy in the streets.

"Your sisters are there," Devi Devi whispered. Meviahd could feel that tightening deep in her gut.

* * *

"Again," Jandali commanded. He slid a finger across the page in front of her and tapped the middle of a paragraph written there. "Your accent is horrible here. The sound comes deeper from your throat. Huskier."

"Is it supposed to matter?" Meviahd demanded, frustrated. She'd been working on the correct pronunciation for the better part of the past hour. Her face was hot and flushed, and the midday air in Jandali's living room was thick and dusty. "Your Darnassian sounds like trash, doesn't seem to bother you."

"Disrespectful brat. It matters if I say it does. Besides, this is an apology. It should at least sound good. And," he finished with poison dripping from his tongue, "Not '_like trash_'"

The apology was for the draenei she'd almost killed. Meviahd was to present a formal statement, in the draenei language, to a assembly of all of the offended. This included not only the draenei who had traveled from Azuremyst Isle, but the troll heads of Jin'Jeda as well. Meviahd could almost imagine Zuri's smug face, her full lips twisted around her little tusks.

Meviahd couldn't figure out why the troll hated her. But she felt it, that dark, cold loathing that rolled off the Antu'zul in waves whenever Meviahd was nearby.

The only thing she could think of, that night she'd seen Zuri kissing Jandali under his doorframe. Seen him push her off with rage red hot on his tongue. And Zuri had seen her too, crouched half-hidden in the tree, that Meviahd knew. She found it easier to pretend the knot that had tied her stomach sick that day was from the look Zuri had given her, rather than anything else.

After a few more tries on the apology, Jandali dropped into an armchair across from her and pulled the sheet of paper away.

"The humans have a saying, 'Stormwind was not built in a day.' You made good progress." He sighed and settled into the chair more.

Earlier that morning Meviahd had moved what little possessions she had from the house across the village to the house Jandali stayed in. His bedroom was upstairs, hers down. He'd offered to stock the first-floor kitchen for her, but Meviahd had refused his offer. She would either stock it herself, or take her meals upstairs with him. So far neither of them had mentioned much about the living situation. For some reason it seemed too awkward to touch upon, as if mentioning it would make it more real.

When she looked up at him Jandali was studying her with a bright, curious look on his face.

"You're no archer. And before your lucky shot in the cave, I doubt you held a gun before in your life. But you were a Horse Hawk rider, and a soldier." He started speaking softly, and the smile he gave her was a cautious one, "What exactly did you used to be, Meh'vi Moonweaver?"

Meviahd started. She hadn't expected that. For a moment she hesitated, but he would know eventually. She'd asked him once how long the Jandali trained his apprentice, and he'd just laughed at her. Years and years and years, he'd said.

"Devi Devi and I would do regular rounds, like patrols and such. And he'd fly me into my mission locations."

He was being patient with her, Meviahd could tell. He wanted to ask her more specifics, but Meviahd would not be rushed. She tugged a spike of her silver hair impatiently behind her ear and continued in a guarded voice.

"I had a target I would have to take out. Devi dropped me off, I went in and took care of whatever it was, and then we would meet later at some prearranged point for the trip home."

"You were an assassin?" He blinked.

"Assassin! Certainly not. I was..." It was a dirty word in Darnassian. 'Assassin' was the same word as 'murderer,' and shared a root with the Darnassian word for 'snake' as well. To call someone an assassin in Darnassus would have been to call them a dishonorable, no better than a dog.

"I was a soldier. Special operations. That's it."

"You were a _hit-man_." Jandali lapsed into the Common word for it, which Meviahd recognized. She bristled and he shrugged at her. "Call it what you will, girlie, but that's what you were. Nothing wrong with it, if you're askin' me. But don't try and sugar coat it. If they told you to off someone, and you carried out the job, you were an assassin. When did you start doing it?"

She told him and saw anger rise suddenly into his face. His eyes burned.

"That would have made you... A child. You were just a child when they started sending you out."

"I was old enough. They'd trained me well."

"I don't care how well you were trained." He ticked something off on his fingers for a second, then his scowl deepened. "By my people's standards you would have been sixteen."

"I was well-"

"It's not _right_. They shouldn't have had a child spilling their blood for them. And you call my people monsters."

Meviahd stood abruptly. Her chair flew out behind her, hitting the ground with a clatter. Jandali clenched his fists in his lap for a second, then pressed a hand to his temple.

"Wait, I'm sorry. It was nothing against you. It was just... Never mind. I'm sorry."

Meviahd briefly considered leaving. But it was not so simple anymore. Awkwardly, she picked up her chair from the ground and sat again, the tips of her ears hot.

"I got a letter today," Jandali began, his voice gentle. He was playing nice now. "From Vol'Jin. The situation in Booty Bay has escalated to the point where they won't negotiate with trolls anymore, not even the Darkspears. And what you told me today about Auberdine... But anyways, Vol'Jin has asked me to go into Booty Bay and try and find out what I can there. Ask the goblins the first signs they saw there, where they think it came from. Try and reopen the gates a little, if you will."

"I thought they weren't allowing any troll into Booty Bay?"

He laughed in a strange, dark way, and said, "Special privileges for the Jandali. And, of course, for the Jandali's apprentice. Has she ever been to Stranglethorn before?"

* * *

This took me longer than I wanted to get out :|


	17. Chapter 16

Trying to get some chapters out faster! My job has been railing me for hours lately, but I'm starting to get into the juicy parts I wanted to write for. Thanks so much to everyone who has favorited and commented. Keeps me going!

* * *

Jandali knew it was wrong, but he was overjoyed to have her with him.

Throughout the entire journey: the raptor ride down to Ratchet, the boat ride to Stranglethorn Vale, the pass through the docks of Booty Bay, she asked questions. Why did the goblins have the trading market cornered? Did all goblins want to be tradesmen? Who was the big statue of? What was the Zandali word for boat?

At one point on the docks of Booty Bay, while a disgruntled Bay Bruiser dim-wittedly checked Jandali's travel papers, he caught Meviahd watching a tauren with wide moon eyes.

"I've never seen one so close up. They live with the druids, but..."

"Friendly people," Jandali remarked absently, casting his eye over at the bull warrior. "Usually."

"I've always wanted to see Thunder Bluff. I heard it was all mesas and they had lifts and, oh, I flew near it once with Devi Devi and it was dark, but in the moonlight-"

"I'll take you sometime," Jandali cut off her chatter, holding his hand out as the goblin shuffled his papers and handed them back. When the troll turned to Meviahd she was staring up at him with those glowing eyes.

"We really could?" She asked.

"Sure," he shrugged, "We can go anywhere. I could take you."

She offered him a wide, white smile and he felt his heart flutter a little. Jandali grit his teeth to that. He was far too old, he decided, for fluttering hearts.

They hit up the inn first, all three stories of it. Meviahd studied the outside, clearly impressed with the piece of whatever ship they'd formed it out of.

Their first meeting, a quick audience with the tauren Fleet Master Seahorn, proved useless. The tauren could tell them that the ships coming mostly from the south of Stranglethorn were the ones that had first seen infection in the troll population. But he could not tell them what they might have encountered, or even for sure that they had gone ashore. The disease had hit at different times, and had gone undetected for days. The ships had no record of which sailors took care of which jobs.

Jandali hadn't managed to cinch a meeting with the busy Baron Revilgaz, leader of Booty Bay, but the goblin had left him a note explaining that 'he knew jack nothing.' Similarly, the innkeeper Skindle reported he had little to tell them either.

"All I know is, they were diseased and we didn't want 'em here. Didn't matter where they got it." The little goblin said, rubbing at a dirty mug with an even dirtier rag. He was eyeing Meviahd in a way Jandali didn't like at all.

"Did any of your patrons mention anything a few days before the epidemic broke out? Maybe they saw a strange creature, or a funny plant." Jandali was trying hard to hold his cool, even when the goblin gave Meviahd a wink. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a muscle in the elf's jaw tighten.

"Not that I remember. The naga were gettin' real pushy the past few weeks, but we ain't seen much at all of them lately. Now, if ya don't mind, yer scarin' away my customers! The lady, of course, is welcome to stay if'n she wants ta."

Jandali fastened his hand around Meviahd's wrist and dragged her out behind him. She protested lightly, but followed him out onto the busy docks.

"Who gave you that shirt?" He demanded, frustration making him impatient. Meviahd was wearing a short half-shirt, beaded heavily and hung with tassels and little bits of bright cloth. It was traditional, but showy. When he had asked her Meviahd squirmed a little where she was standing.

"Zuri said it would look proper."

"Yeah, I bet she did. Come on." He pulled her after him again, this time into the large market nearby where hawkers already could be heard calling their wares. Parrots screeched, metal and chain mail gleamed, and there was the smell of leather and fish and salt. In the middle of it Jandali stopped and pulled his black hood over his head, straightening his posture. When he did he was a full two or three heads taller than Meviahd. Maybe you could have mistaken him for an elf.

Winking at her, he remarked, "Remember this, girlie, there's no news like street news." He leaned against the nearby wall and Meviahd turned to do the same.

A man in the crowd bumped into her. Human, and down on his luck from the look of it. He had a scraggly beard and a bronze hoop in one ear. When Meviahd collided with him, he pulled back with a huge yellow smile and opened his coat to her.

Inside were little vials, each glistening like rows of beetles perched on his coat. They came in different colors, blues and greens and bottle browns. But they all contained more or less the same thing: bundles of dried herbs.

"Is this what you were looking for, huh?" The man drew closer to her, whisper-hissing, "Maybe for your troll friend, huh? He's not supposed to be here, but I know. Something to take the edge off, huh? Something for the troll's edge? All the trolls been lookin' for it."

Jandali didn't move from his position on the wall. He was watching Meviahd closely to see what she'd do. The crowd filtered around them, as if unseeing. For a moment Meviahd paused, caught off guard, and then her eyes were hooded.

"What do you got?" She asked, easily as if she had been looking for it all along.

"All strong stuff, strongest Rot you can get around here. Something to take the troll's edge off for hours and hours. Best Rot in town, huh? Not the shit the goblins ship."

"How much?"

"All prices, my lady, all prices."

Meviahd handed him what Jandali would have considered quite a large amount of gold, counting it out into the vagrant's eager hands. He plucked two of the blue bottles from his coat and pressed them secretively into her palms.

"That's good stuff, huh? Now you'd best be on your way, my lady. They don't want trolls here and I know, huh?" He disappeared into the crowd as easily as he had come, leaving Meviahd holding the two blue vials clutched against her hip.

"Why did you buy that?" Jandali whispered to her.

"Because he said trolls were looking for it. And because whatever it was, it's illegal to have it." They left the market and went down into a secluded alleyway. Jandali uncorked one of the vials and gave it an experimental sniff. He shook some out into his hand, rolling it over and over on his palms. It was dried, though still malleable. The leaves were small and dark green, shot through with oily, grey-blue hairs.

"Are you an herbalist?" She asked.

"Yes, well studied. But I don't know what this is at all." He pushed it back into the bottle and looked up the docks. "I might know someone who does."

* * *

"He said the goblins were shipping it too, but I haven't even heard of it. Rot? I don't know. Here, this place." Jandali had stopped in front of what was actually a rather large, lavish-looking cottage built into the cliffside. They were far up on the top of the Bay's back cliffs, where the choicest houses overlooked the wide docks and shimmering aquamarine water. Without knocking on the door, Jandali turned the knob and pushed his way inside. Meviahd followed him hesitantly.

The inside of the building was as impressive as it's face. The furniture was all tasteful leather. Large potted plants, heavy with gold and purple flowers, bobbed gently besides tables, at the arms of chairs, and in every available corner. The floor was part plush rug, part shimmering tiles. The whole color scheme was a magenta and yellow, jarring but opulent.

Jandali wasted no time. He set himself on the nearest plant, wrenching the violet-and-butter blooms up at their stems, hands full of knotted roots. Meviahd gasped as potting soil spilled over onto the immaculate tiles. Finding nothing in that pot, Jandali reached for the next, his smeared hands curling around the steady trunk of the plant.

A noise interrupted him. It was a soft gasping sound, feminine to his untrained ear. When Jandali looked up he caught sight of a Blood Elf. The shirtless waif couldn't have been older than Meviahd, standing delicately on the edge of a door frame and staring wide-eyed at the mangled flowers hanging like dead eels from Jandali's hand. The troll held up a hand, ready to speak to the boy, but the tanned face had disappeared. Jandali caught the sight of his long red-blong hair disappearing around the corner.

"Who's house is this?" Meviahd hissed. She was frozen like a cornered animal at the door, "You're destroying it..."

" I don't care. Ah hah!" Jandali pulled up a third plant and found a mess of carefully wrapped cloth packages tangled in it's deep root system. He emptied one into his hand and smiled bitterly at the dark green leaves, the blue shoots.

"I was right."

"I should have known." A new voice intoned, "The Jandali, ruining my plants."

He had aged slightly. Grey hairs growing out as his temple, tucked self-conciously behind his ears. His hair was longer too, coppery-yellow like a bar of bronze and fluffed in layers past his shoulders. Jandali smiled at the human, but the smile he gave back was watery. There was a strained set to his delicate lips.

Gabriel Perch was an official Trade Prince of Booty Bay, though he was thus far the only human to gain the title. The goblins resented him for good reason. The man had managed to garner the support of several groups of well-established patrons, shooting up in the ranks of local traders through a mix of good, honest business and sleazy, ingenious schemes. Jandali and he went way back, further than the troll cared to admit, but they'd only recently seen each other in the past five years or so.

Standing beside Gabriel, the Blood Elf boy from before clutched at his sleeve. Their emerald glowing eyes and sun-touched skin set them apart from their kaldorei cousins, but it was easy to see the resemblance between the Night Elves and their banished kin. Meviahd, who must not have seen many Blood Elves without that predator-prey instinct, was peering curiously at the boy.

"You could have knocked," Gabriel growled, pushing the boy gently aside and coming to stand by Jandali. The human wasn't all that tall, only a few inches above Meviahd, who was extremely short for an elf. Jandali smiled down at him.

"Haven't aged a day. Well, those grey hairs..." Gabriel punched him in the shoulder. He wasn't particularly gentle about it. Jandali shivered as the shock waves rattled through the wound at his hip.

"So now you've found my stash, I suppose," The human indicated the leaves Jandali was still holding in his open hand. Gabriel was only half concerned with them, the troll could tell. He kept flicking his eyes over at Meviahd, scanning her critically.

"I suppose I have. I can add it to mine," Jandali teased, reaching into the pocket of his leather pants to pull out the blue bottles from before. He shook them under Gabriel's nose and the human gave him a withering look.

"My workers have been stealing from my supplies. Street sells back for double. Bastards."

"What is it?"

"It's an invitation to lunch," Gabriel said.

* * *

They insisted Meviahd sit in Gabriel's posh, enormous dining room while they both put out a veritable spread. Gabriel's food stocks were always overflowing. Jandali had met the human at the very start of his long, profitable career, but even when he'd been poor Gabriel had kept a well stocked kitchen.

"Rely on a swish for good food," Jandali muttered, taking the terry cloth cover off of a plate of cold, sliced meat. He inhaled the rich, aromatic smell with little zeal. His appetite had dropped off as of late.

"So who's the bird?"

"Meviahd? My apprentice."

Gabriel nearly dropped the plate of vegetables he was carrying. He gave Jandali a brief, confused look, then went running out to deposit the plate on the dining room table. He returned with ears hungry for gossip.

"So you finally chose one?" Gabriel swung his head back towards the dining room as if he could see Meviahd through the walls. The human merchant was one of the only ones that Jandali had told the secret of his nomination to. He wagged a blond eyebrow at Jandali and grinned wolfishly.

"She must be a spicy little dish then, to draw your attention."

"She has spirit." Jandali ignored the actual meaning behind Gabriel's words. He was too tired to deal with them. The troll tapped the stump of his tusk, "Saved the rest of my head. Felt I owed her the same. It's a long story, mon."

"Yes, I did notice you were a bit lopsided now. I was going to ask... But I'm sure I can get you to tell me sometime soon."

"I won't be here too long."

"You say that every time."

"But it's true this time. The bruisers will kick me out in a few days, if I haven't already excused myself." Jandali paused heavily, "This plague, this infection thing... This is bad, Gabe. There are a lot of people dying."

Gabriel laughed. It had an uncharacteristic, hollow sound to it.

"More than you know," he said quietly, "But you're about to. Come on, grab that. It's the last one."

Trailing the human, Jandali hefted a tankard of herby dressing and entered the dining room again. Meviahd was seated stiffly at one of the overstuffed chairs at the table, trying very hard to have a disjointed Orcish conversation with the Blood Elf boy that sat nearby. He nodded at her with a blank look on his face. Coming around the corner, Jandali heard Meviahd say, in her sparse Orcish, "_We came on a big spoon!"_

The Blood Elf just kept on nodding.

She'd messed up the Orcish 'ship' (_dogre) _with the word for 'spoon' (_dagra), _but at least she was trying. Suddenly overcome with a little gush of pride, Jandali rested his big hand lightly on her head as he passed, brushing the silvery spikes of her hair. He regretted it almost instantly afterwards. As he sat at the table, the feeling of her hair in his hands lingered for longer than it should have.

Jandali had been taught to be the Jandali by his father. You could look up to your father. Your father could yell at you, or punish you. Once in a while, when Jandali had shirked his duties or spoken too harshly, his father had even given him a good whack. You could nurse a sore lip your father gave you and still admire him.

Because that was how it was supposed to be. A teacher-mentor relationship, or a parent-to-offspring type of thing. Not like this. Not like feeling someone's hair long on your fingers after it was gone. Like wanting to gather up the white spikes of it at the nape of her neck.

He mashed the feeling back down into his sour stomach. Jandali felt as if he were rapidly losing control of the reins.

"Hey, Tuskar," Gabriel was waving a hand in front of his face. Sitting at the head of the table, with the Blood Elf boy at his right, he leaned across to try and tap a finger against Jandali's nose.

"What did you just call me?" Jandali demanded, snapping from his reverie. Beside him, Meviahd was repeating the word 'Tuskar' over and over as if trying to figure out where she'd heard it before.

"I don't know, like tusks I kind of thought. _Tuskar._ You know. One tusk..." Gabriel paused awkwardly and cleared his throat.

Jandali had spent a short of amount of time in Northrend. He knew of the walrus men of the north. He glared.

"But look, enough about that." Gabriel continued. He reached into his pocket and spread a few little cloth packages on the table. The same dark green, oily leaves poured from their tops. "Let me tell you about the business of a plague. Let me tell you about Sweetrot."


	18. Chapter 17

Meviahd's hunger died near instantly, once Gabriel began to explain.

"The trolls calls it '_La Grippa'. _The Night Elves have been calling '_Un'thea'shal'._" Gabriel paused as the Blood Elf boy whispered something delicately into his ear. Smiling wryly, the human murmured, "Eyan tells me his people call it '_Muhai'Elu'_."

"The Choke." Jandali translated the trolls' version. "And the Thalassian one means 'Moon-spots.'"

"'_Un'thea'shal'. _Growing Death." Meviahd licked her full lips nervously.

Gabriel nodded. "A couple of the other races have come up with their own names. More now than even a few weeks ago. Because it's getting larger and larger. What happened was, Steamwheedle Cartel ships starting coming back with reports of harpies going crazy. Ratchet first, then Azshara."

Meviahd took her breath in a little to quickly at the mention of the land.

"But then it was reports from everywhere. Harpies across Kalimdor were contacting the disease. After a while, even Northrend would find pockets of them spread across the area. A few weeks ago, news starting pouring in that satyrs in Desolace were showing symptoms as well." Here Gabriel paused to pick up one of the packets spread on the table, nudging a few dried leaves out of it with his long fingers.

"But before that, even before the harpies in Northrend, the trolls showed signs. Funny thing is, there are no harpies in the Eastern Kingdoms. And there are no satyrs in the Eastern Kingdoms. The majority of diseased trolls were popping through Booty Bay ports, freshly infected with little idea how. But here in Eastern, not satyrs. Not harpies. Something else."

Gabriel talked with his hands a lot. When he opened his mouth to speak next he eyed Meviahd and splayed a hand dramatically towards her, like a circus ringleader.

"Not a month after the trolls began to report it, the Night Elves were next."

"Now, I can tell you this, your people are lying to you." Gabriel pointed one of his thin fingers at Jandali. The troll blinked, brows furrowing. The human continued, tossing his blond hair over his shoulder, "They've probably told you only half of what's even going on. I bet you didn't know that Raventusk Village, in the Hinterlands, is gone. All the trolls there are either dead, or they flew the coop. It's a ghost-land."

Meivahd winced. It was a callous delivery. She snuck a glance at Jandali, sitting next to her at the long table. He was working his jaw noiselessly, then tightening it so much Meviahd thought she might hear a tooth crack.

"I bet you didn't know that Arathi stopped accepting troll visitors, even troll guards. There are no shelters for your people there anymore. And you," Gabriel rounded on Meviahd so suddenly she barely had time to register it before he was bearing down on her. There was something strangely hawkish and alien about his features. "Your people are even worse. They've barely told the population anything, even though both Auberdine and Nijel's Point are both closed and quarantined. For the Night Elves only, of course. The humans that were there have fled."

"How do you know all of this?" Meviahd demanded suddenly, "How do you know when the leaders haven't even told their own people."

"Because Azeroth is huge!" Gabriel boomed back. Beside him, the Blood Elf boy squeaked and dropped his fork at the sudden noise. "New travels fast, but not _that_ fast. I bet you've never even been to Nigel's Point. And with all the elves quarantined inside of it, and everyone else locked out, the word isn't really spreading much, understand? But there's always someone that knows the happenings of the world, and that's travelers and tradesmen. And I_,_ my dear, _I _am a tradesman."

"You see, not only am I feeling this plague through closed ports, but I'm getting a ah, silver lining out of it, if you will. Ask any goblin, tragedy means business. A few weeks after the symptoms began to show in the trolls and the night elves, some clever goblin found our perfect solution. Sweetrot." Here he indicated the leaves he'd been toying with on the table. Their blue, oily hairs had left the wood with a sticky film over it. "Smoke it, make it into a tea, I hear some even use it to make foods. Grows right here in Stranglethorn, though thus far it hadn't been much use to us. It's very weak by itself, you see. But somehow this cheeky little goblin found that contact with the plague amplified it's effects ten fold. Anyone bearing the boils smokes it, it kills their pain, gives them a short boost. A few people told me it's like being healthy again for hours and hours, sometimes days."

"I wanna to speak ta this goblin." Jandali said. He was eyeing the Sweetrot on the table with something that looked strangely like hunger.

Gabriel rolled his eyes to the ceiling and seemed suddenly very interested in whatever was up there. "I'm afraid that's impossible." He said, "The goblin in question had... An unfortunate boating accident."

"You mean the other goblins had him killed before he could start claiming a slice of the profits." Jandali growled. Gabriel shrugged.

"He was on an unfortunate boat..."

"The elves use this too?" Meviahd asked quietly. Over and over in her head she could hear Devi Devi talking about Auberdine, saying 'Your sisters are there.'

"Hah, sometimes more often than the trolls, even. They've got the money. Since the plague started a couple of months ago, we've been shipping pounds and pounds _and pounds_ of the stuff to both factions. The goblins even got some type of agricultural thing going, and we've started growing fields of it in Stranglethorn. We've got to ship it in secrecy, of course. The demand for it is high, but if either the Alliance or Horde knew we were selling it to their people, they'd probably be more than a bit miffed. It's highly addictive stuff, and while you're on it... But you know the Steamwheedle Cartel, they'll do anything for a coin. We land ships with secret stashes of the stuff and have it run all across the continent to people that sell it for us in the cities."

He laughed darkly and said, "It's making me a goddamn fortune."

"Is it a cure?" Jandali demanded.

"Heavens no. Think we wouldn't already have it patented, or have both factions paying through the nose for it? Nah, some think it's a cure, but I know better. It's really just half a day's relief."

"So why hasn't Booty Bay closed to elves yet, too? Why just trolls?" Meviahd asked.

"Because we don't want to look like we know too much. _We_ know that elves have been hit hard because we've been shipping Rot to them in secret. But until the Night Elf government formally announces that it's having a problem, we lay low. Mind you, it's any day now that Auberdine's closed. Your people were a bit more willing to admit, Jandali. They started asking for help weeks and weeks ago."

"What about the Blood Elves?" Jandali asked suddenly. Meviahd could see the faraway look in his eyes, like he was somewhere else, thinking.

"Closed capital. They're being extra careful. As soon as the plague was even a hint of a rumor, they threw up the walls, the xenophobic blighters." Gabriel reached over and affectionately pinched the cheek of the boy sitting beside him. Meviahd wondered briefly if the human and blood elf were related, perhaps through some marriage further up a family tree. Eyan blushed.

"Some are traveling still, but only the brave ones." Gabriel winced slightly, shrugging, "And me, I'm making a fortune. A _fortune. _Can't lie and say it hasn't been good to me, but damn if it's not blood money."

Meviahd turned to Jandali to say something and forgot almost immediately what it was. The troll looked scared to death, or perhaps ill. He ducked his head for a moment, his one tusk the only thing visible under the heavy wine-colored dreadlocks loose from his partial ponytail. In an instant he'd straightened again, making as if he'd been pushing his hair back. His face was steady once more.

If he'd noticed being seen Jandali made no indication. Meviahd fought for something to say in the silence, but the only things on her mind were questions she didn't want to ask in front of Gabriel or the Blood Elf.

"Where are you staying? Surely not the Salty Sailor..." The human asked suddenly.

Jandali shifted uncomfortably. "Well, no. They wouldn't be allowin' trolls in there so we're staying in the under docks..."

"With the girl? Nonsense!" Gabriel swung to give Meviahd a little wink. Under the table, her hands tightened. That was the last thing she needed, the trader taking a fancy to her. But the under docks of Stranglethorn weren't much to be scoffed at either.

"You'll be staying here, of course. Even if you did ruin my beautiful flowers, Jandali, you brute... Still. I've only one guest room but it'll be perfect. There's even two beds in there. I won't take no for an answer. And I've got that kind of power, I'll seriously just kidnap you both."

"Charming," Jandali smiled weakly. "But of course I could always sleep on a couch in the living room-"

"No, no," Meviahd said it too quickly even for her own liking, but she plowed ahead. Gabriel had given her a second wink while Jandali had been talking, and she'd much rather not be alone. "It's fine, really. Sleep on a good bed, please. I know your hip's been hurting you."

Not that she hadn't slept near him in the Barrens' cave. Not that it mattered anyways, where they slept.

Jandali eyed her sharply for a moment before sighing, throwing one of his hands limply at the wrist in a sign of defeat. Gabriel clapped excitedly and leaned down to say loudly into the Blood Elf's ear, "Aren't they cute?"

He tried not to make anything of their shared bedroom, but she knew better. For Meviahd, who had grown up around the painfully reserved Night Elves, Jandali was sometimes almost clumsily easy to read. Where the trolls were encouraged to share their emotions, Jandali's natural instinct was to wear his mind on his face. What could you expect, Meviahd thought, from a people whose eye's were windows to their inner secrets.

She would see it sometimes, the wince he gave when he would look into her face and find nothing there. Meviahd knew he couldn't look past her moon glow eyes.

Jandali made himself pointedly absent while Meviahd changed into a loose shirt, and a pair of white linen pants that tied at the waist with a string. When he returned to the room he came bare chested, wearing similarly simple cloth pants and nothing else. His face was carefully blank, though he gave Meviahd a tight sort of smile.

Jandali bid her a goodnight quickly and rolled over so that his back was to her. Their two beds were set on either side of the tastefully decorated room, a large window between them, and the light of the moon outside sectioned the floor between into squares of silver like a playing field. It was not long before Jandali's breath had evened and he fell asleep.

The elf shut her eyes in the quiet. When she opened them again it seemed like an instant later, though she could tell from the muted shadows in the room that it was hours after. Still submerged in night, the walls took on an otherworldly quality. Great slabs of darkness occupied the corners. The papery layers of light from the windows rested gently, half on the floor and half across Jandali's bed.

He moaned suddenly. Meviahd froze under the sheets, startled, but the troll just smacked his lips and rolled over to face her.

He'd let his hair down before he'd gone to sleep. He rarely let it go unbound. The dreadlocks framed his face like tree roots, almost long enough to touch the bandages around his waist. His eyes were still closed, and the light from the moon cut a white triangle of light across his cheekbone and and side of his aquiline nose.

Meviahd wondered what trolls found attractive in their males. Was Jandali handsome amongst his people? She remembered the strangely grim look on his face when he'd said, "Old enough to be your father."

Jandali made another quiet noise in the dark. Then he roared.

Meviahd nearly jumped out of her skin. Her hand instinctively found her blade on the bedside table, gripping it white knuckled for a few seconds while her heart slowed. The shaman was sitting up in his bed, thrashing against the covers. He made another sound, something that could have been a sob, before his eyes fluttered open.

The troll began to tear at the bandages around his waist, ripping linen feverishly. It was only then he seemed to realize Meviahd was in the room with him. Jandali sucked in a breath, turning to her with wild eyes.

"Meh'vi. Ah'm sorry if I woke you..." He trailed awkwardly, watching her now with a mostly expressionless face. He was trying to smooth down the dressings on his hip without drawing too much attention to it.

"Bad dream?" Meviahd didn't try and disguise her staring. She watched him relentlessly as he patched the bandages haphazardly back together. Meviahd wasn't stupid. She knew how long it took wounds to heal. She knew he hadn't been to the healer with it for weeks, and that his limp was getting worse instead of better. Jandali thought he was doing so well to hide it.

"Yeh could call it dat." He tapped the side of his broken tusk with a practiced ease, as if he'd already dismissed the nightmare. "Tha saw still be hauntin' me from time ta time."

Meviahd frowned. She pulled her legs against her chest, resting her chin of her knees.

"You don't have to lie to me, you know."

"I'm not-"

"Please, do not insult me. Your accent it stronger when you're not telling the truth. Or when you're scared. I'm surprised no one has told you before."

Jandali pushed his dreadlocks off his brow and said quietly, "No, someone has before."

Meviahd hesitated for a moment before she stood. She could feel fear gathering in the tips of her fingers, super sensitive and hot. It's not that she didn't feel bad for doing it this way, she thought as she kneeled on the foot of his mattress. It's just that it was the only way for it to be done.

Jandali's face was half scared, half expectant as she leaned forwards across the bed. Meviahd's hand ghosted from his collarbone to his neck so delicate and slow, but Jandali was an instant too late in catching it when she began to tear at his bandages herself.

She had them halfway off before he threw her forcefully off the bed. Too late; she'd already seen the telltale red welts.

Meviahd twisted on the wooden floor and looked up at him. Jandali had stood, straightening himself to the his impressive seven feet. His gaunt face loomed above her. She had expected his anger, and there it was, thick and terrible. She had played him, after all. But Meviahd hadn't expected the sadness in his eyes. It was so suddenly overwhelming that she could only stare up at him, lying at his feet belly up like a beaten dog.

Outside, someone screamed. A window shattered. That one scream turned into several and suddenly, amidst the steadily building roar of fire, all of Booty Bay was crying out. A bell rang somewhere in the night: the signal for evacuation.

* * *

Woah, woah, woah. It should not have taken me that long to get this chapter out! Sorry about that guys. I struggled a lot with that last scene because, my god Meviahd, you are so thick and serious you are no seductress. Every time I wrote it I kept thinking, Jandali would probably be feeling her head for fever if she crawled across his bed at him.

But maybe not. Jandali, you are no gentleman.

I promise to get the next chapter out quicker D:


	19. Chapter 18, Part 1

Man, I have waited forever to write this chapter and it is HUGE. This is another one of those two-part chapters, only this time it's from Jandali's point of view. Think of it as a companion to the two chapters where Jandali got his tusk removed. Anyways, read and hopefully enjoy. I know I enjoyed writing it. Thank you all so much for the encouraging comments.

A little warning: There's some inflammatory language in this chapter. I figured, we're all adults here, should be fine. But still, this is a heads' up.

* * *

Jandali felt entirely overwhelmed.

There was the rapid-fire rise and fall of his heart. First it was beating in his throat, his breath quickening when her hand passed over the clenched muscles of his stomach. Then his heart dropped into his gut as Meviahd began to tear at the bandages on his waist.

Finally, when he stood over her with rage and thought that things could not get any worse, they did. His heart plummeted into his toes as he heard the evacuation bell's shrill wail. Meviahd twirled on the floor and stood up beside him. They both leaned down to stare out the bedroom window, neither of them breathing.

On the planks by the house, goblins fled. A fire had started on the lower docks, and in front of it black smudges danced and panicked. Even with the distance, Jandali could see some of the figures waving limbs that were alight, or trying to smolder flaming shoulders by rolling across the floor.

Some lay on the ground, their backs coated with flames, but they didn't move at all.

A naga passed below the bedroom window, so close Jandali could see the livid red sores that bubbled across it's face and down it's neck. It's eyes rolled madly in it's head. Looking now, Jandali could tell that other dark shapes moving through Booty Bay were naga as well. The creatures were killing without discretion, sinking webbed claws into the flesh of anything that moved.

Horrified, Jandali watched as a naga woman, her serpentine lower half thrashing, wrapped around a human man. He stumbled and fell, face contorting when the embers from a burning building came crashing down on his legs and the naga's lower end. Entwined on the boardwalk, the pair began to burn from the bottom up. The entire time, as if she couldn't feel the fire, the naga sank her teeth into the mans throat. Again and again until her mouth came out thick with gore, flashing red in the air.

It reminded Jandali of the harpies. All gnawing and slashing mindlessly, even as elf and orc bore down on them with spear and sword.

Would he become like that as well? A mindless machine of rage, hell-bent on blood. Jandali's hands shook; he dug his fingernails into his palms.

"We need to go," Meviahd urged, her voice rising. She must have been trying to get his attention for a long while now. He turned to her slowly, stupid with panic. She grit her teeth as if immediately recognizing the look on his face. Grabbing his hand, the elf pulled him out of the room and down the hall. She paused only to tear through the travel packs they'd left in the living room, producing a sheathed dagger for him and unlacing the blunderbuss she'd brought with her.

Gabriel appeared at the foot of the stairs, his blond hair still tossed with sleep. His face was ashen.

"The bell-"

"The naga are infected. They are attacking the Bay." Meviahd looked up at him quickly, then back down to what she was doing, "Get the _sindorei_ and a weapon, we need to leave."

"Weapon? Leave?" Gabriel shot Jandali a panicked look, but he just shrugged. She was right.

"Or stay here and die," Meviahd loaded a few slugs into the gun and sighted down it's shaft. She had strapped on a belt and her knives, but was otherwise wearing the white linen shirt and pants she'd gone to bed in. She should count herself lucky, he figured. Jandali wasn't even wearing a shirt.

Gabriel squeaked and fled upstairs, returning shortly with a short sword that looked awkward in his hands. Meviahd gave him a doubtful look, but said nothing about it.

"The elf?"

"He left a few hours earlier..."

"Then you should pray that he found his way." Meviahd braced herself against the front door. Jandali stared at her. The white spikes of her hair curled around her temples, disarrayed from sleep. They'd grown a bit longer since he'd kidnapped her. Her face was pale and drawn, and the white bars of the wing markings on her cheeks looked like milk. She gripped the gun in her hands solidly.

She did not look scared. She looked brave and breathtaking.

"Just follow me." Meviahd said, her voice even and comforting. "We'll be fine."

It occurred to Jandali that Meviahd did not know the Bay. Still, when she nodded at them both and pushed the front door open out into the blistering heat, he followed her. The air trembled with screams, the roar of fire, the snarls of naga. There were too many of them for even the Bay Bruisers to handle. The snakes overtook them with sheer numbers, piling out of the sea in writhing clumps and slithering up the boardwalk beams until Jandali couldn't look anywhere without seeing fire or scales.

A huge male naga burst from the wall beside him. Scraps of mortar and cement bounced off Jandali's cold, shaking chest. The brute raised a hand wide as a shovel and clubbed Jandali's nose in.

Then there was blackness. Oily blackness. Jandali spun through it until, struggling to pull air into his shattered lungs, he came to. Sudden as that, like being born again. Jandali gasped, choking. A river of blood poured from his nose, into his mouth, and down his chin. His vision cleared and he saw the fire and scales again. He saw the cool white linen of Meviahd's pant leg and her delicate bare foot.

The elf was standing over him on the docks, staring down the bronze blunderbuss. In rapid succession she fired at the naga. Once, twice. Quick shots that blew holes the size of grapes into his chest. The naga roared and charged her, Meviahd swinging the heavy gun at his head. The naga brushed the blow aside as easily as if it were a wooden toy.

Jandali scrambled aside as the creature's thick tail came swinging around. Still half-laying on the ground, he saw the finned appendage curl around Meviahd's leg and twist, knocking her off balance. The tail pinned her arms to her side. The naga lashed out and caught her throat in his webbed hand. He seemed to smile. Squeezed.

All Jandali could see then was red. He didn't remember doing it, but somehow he had unsheathed the dagger she'd given him. He stood. Screaming, seeing Meviahd's face turning slack and blue, he fell on the naga. He didn't care about the spines along the beast's back, even when they pierced his skin. Jandali knew only to stab at any scaled bit near him. He could hear his own hoarse voice yelling from somewhere far away, but all he could see between the red was flashes of the dagger slicing a turquoise arm, a fishy face, a spiked shoulder.

The naga pushed him away again and dropped Meviahd, shrieking when Jandali's dagger ruptured one of the swollen pustules on it's neck. Meviahd grabbed the fallen blunderbuss from where it had landed below her.

There was a brief second of struggle. The naga raked it's sluiced it's claws through the air and shredded her shoulder. She fumbled with ammo, cocked the blunderbuss, and jammed the barrel into the naga's open mouth. The resulting bang, and the shower of warm, wet flesh, didn't seem to phase her.

Meviahd's face didn't even change when she wiped a hand across her cheek, and pulled it away smeared with dark blood that wasn't her own. She didn't look anything but frustrated when she glanced up at the stairs that led out of the Bay.

Jandali wished he felt like that. Not like he really felt: sick and tired and so, so scared.

Gabriel appeared at Jandali's right and offered him a hand up.

"A lot of help you are," Jandali spat, blood dribbling off his lips. He put a careful finger against his throbbing nose and winced when he found a bump that he didn't remember ever having. Gabriel gave him a quick, frantic look.

"You think I know what the _fuck_ I'm doing?" He hissed. His hands were shaking feverishly around the short sword.

"Enough," Meviahd interrupted them. She gave Jandali a scrutinizing look up and down. Checking for any other injuries, he imagined. Then she flicked a hand up, pointing a finger at the stairs above the docks.

"That the way out?"

"Yes."

"Then stick close."

They followed her again. The blood-smattered Night Elf was ethereal in the dark port. She looked like one of the high-contrast images he had seen human painters in Stormwind working on. Paintings depicting images of the personification of victory or courage, always pale women with perfect faces and pristine clothing in the middle of battle.

They ran into a few more naga, but these were smaller, and Meviahd found it easier to dispatch them. They were running on borrowed luck. The closer they got to the stairwell the more Jandali could see that it wasn't going to be a viable escape route. It's length was crawling with naga, some still tearing apart goblin corpses, some tearing apart each other.

"There is a short cut, here," Gabriel called, dropping in between two houses and shimmying along the narrow alleyway. Meviahd and Jandali tailed him, shoulder to shoulder in the tight space. Jandali picked up the scent, even in the commotion, of Meviahd's hair. The way it always smelled, like something green.

He wondered if she could smell his terrible fear.

The trio emerged on the other side of the houses into a wooden wall. Gabriel began to claw at a few uneven boards. Meviahd stooped to help him. Between the two of them they pulled a section of the planks out from the wall. Behind it was a long, damp tunnel that smelled like earth. Roots fine as hair hung in tendrils from it's ceiling.

Meviahd led the way, her eyes the only discernible thing in the dark. After they had turned and shut the door behind them, Jandali called upon the last reserves of his strength and summoned a ball of blue magic. It hung above them as they made their way down the steep, treacherous tunnel, crackling and glowing brightly.

It seemed like hours before they emerged again, though Jandali knew it couldn't possibly have been. On the other side of the tunnel it was still early morning, the sun still hadn't risen, the moons still hung fat and low in the sky. They had fled onto the opposite side of the point and were facing a beach. The water curled into calm waves, lapping the shore gently. A sweet-voiced bird called from a nearby tree. The air was pleasantly warm and a cooling cross breeze blew from down shore.

The wind smelled like smoke.

Jandali put his back against one of the palm trees on the beach and slid down it. The sand underneath him was cold and moist, but solid.

"Do you think they'll retake the bay?" Gabriel asked after a long while of silence.

"Not anytime soon," Meviahd told him. In the moonlight Jandali saw her jaw tighten. She had been facing the ocean, watching the waves crash with a detached expression on her face, but she turned now. She came to kneel in front of where Jandali was sitting, startling him.

Meviahd reached her hands forward calmly, cupping Jandali's chin. Her other hand hovered over his nose. Her eyes were as unreadable as they always were, her face impassive. The troll wished fiercely that she would say something to him. Something about the wound on his hip, or how she'd caught him off guard so easily last night. He wanted her to tell him that nothing was going to change. He wanted so badly for her to lie to him.

"Sorry," Meviahd said.

"For what?"

"This."

The hand over his nose gripped and wrenched it. Jandali let forth a strangled yell, pushing her away from him so that she fell backwards into the sand.

"What the _fuck_." He gave her a look of deep betrayal that she actually managed to laugh at.

"You nose is broken. All crooked. You didn't want me to leave it like that, did you? And you never would have let me set it if I had told you before hand." She hazarded a tentative smile, "Don't want to ruin your good looks, do you?"

Jandali stared at her. Was she teasing him? There was nothing malicious in the look the elf was giving him. Feeling woozy, still wiping the gummy blood from around his mouth, Jandali stood.

"Where do we go?" He asked. Only the sound of the nearby waves answered him. Even Meviahd didn't have an answer. If you looked above the tree-lines and cliffs overhead, the glow of the flaming Bay was visible.

Gabriel cleared his throat and said, "Aw, hell." He lifted the hem of the silk shirt he had left the house in and peeled an envelope from his toned stomach. He shook it, and it jingled.

"Was hoping it wouldn't have to come to this. But, look. We'll buy our way into Grom'gol. The base camp. If we find any other means of travel, we'll buy that too. We'll be fine." The human nodded decidedly. Jandali didn't inform Meviahd that the base camp was a good three days from them, but he gave her a pointed look. Meviahd just pressed her lips in a hard line, nodding.

"We should sleep a little more," Meviahd said suddenly, swallowing. "I will take first watch, then wake someone. We will not want to travel while it is still this dark, and there is at least five more hours of the night."

Jandali didn't feel like he could sleep. He felt like the moment he shut his eyes, something hiding in the dark would jump out to swallow him up. But Gabriel seemed to love the idea, so the trio waded up the soft sand and found a good place to defend.

As per her offer, Meviahd climbed up onto a chimney-like outcropping of rock and settled down to take watch. She spread the blunderbuss over her crossed legs. Below her, Gabriel and Jandali laid on the sand, shaded by massively leafed bush with red flowers like tongues. The troll and human laid with their shoulders nearly touching. Gabriel was staring up into the sky, his brow furrowed and his long hair full of sand. Jandali was staring at Meviahd, barely visible on the rock. In the moonlight the shock of her silver hair was visible, and the profile view of one glowing eye.

"A bit moonstruck, are we, my friend?" Gabriel asked.

Jandali gulped hard and threw his arm over his eyes. He bumped his swollen nose and grimaced.

"I got tha' disease." He said.

"What?"

"Infected! I got wha' the naga have. _La Grippa._ _Un'thea'shal. _I'm sick." Jandali put his arm down in the sand again and his agitation simmered. It was replaced by a dark frustration. "I'm dying, only de Loa know how long it will take, and I suddenly want her so bad it makin' my teeth _ache._"

Jandali could feel Gabriel's stare on him even if he didn't roll over to see it. Even he'd heard the horrible longing in his own voice. Pathetic. Selfish, if he thought about it hard enough. Jandali licked his bloody lips and ran a finger idly over the stump where his tusk used to be.

"You really like this girl, don't you... I mean, 'cause I have to say 'girl'. Because you realize she's a bit on the younger side and you're, well you're not exactly fresh meat, but-"

"And I'm not going to be here much longer." Jandali repeated. He was just starting to believe that fact, and he couldn't even bring himself to say the word 'dying' again. Gabriel fell silent, but he continued what he'd been doing, which was pushing sand over Jandali's ankles with his feet.

"You should have visited me more, stupid troll." Gabriel pouted finally. Jandali actually laughed, turning to see Gabriel's smile. Now he remembered why he had liked the human.

Jandali hadn't felt tired, but after Gabriel fell asleep, he began to count the throbs in his nose. And after a hundred or so, at least as much as he could remember, he nodded off. He must have, because he woke a little before the sunrise, gasping as if he'd been dunked in cold water.

The troll sat up. He felt stiff all over. Gabriel was still sleeping beside him, but Jandali could see the sun rising over the sea, dyeing it peach. He looked up and found Meviahd, still at her post, watching the sunrise with a smile on her face that he didn't often see.

" 'Morning," She said.

Jandali frowned and rose with difficulty. His hip was almost as bad as his nose. Almost. He limped to the bottom of her rock, craning his neck to see her. Meviahd stood as well, balancing on the edge of the tall stone before jumping. Jumping _over_ him. Jandali winced, but she landed it flawlessly, twirling and grinning at him.

"You look awful happy for someone who is lost in the jungle." He told her, "And for someone who denied me of my watch, and stayed up all night."

Meviahd shrugged, "You looked so comfortable sleeping, I couldn't wake you. Besides, I wanted to think."

She took a step closer to him. Jandali unconsciously took a step back. Her face grew more serious, but not unhappily so. Jandali's brain was firing thoughts at him so rapidly it was beginning to throb along time with his nose.

"I wanted to, you know." She said quietly, looking nervous now. She jiggled on the tips of her feet and shuffled a few more steps towards him. Jandali took an equal few in the opposite direction, and his back hit the stone tower. She had him pinned.

"I wanted to, last night. But I had to know first. I had to..." She trailed off and looked him straight in the face. He saw something in her eyes then, easily as that. He was surprised he could have even been so blind before. Jandali could hear his own heartbeat reverberate deep in his head. _Selfish, selfish, selfish._

She was going to kiss him, Jandali realized.

Meviahd closed the space between them then, putting one of her hands on the unwounded side of his stomach, right above the sharp jut of his hip bone. Jandali shivered under her palm. He could feel her chest pressed against his bare one, her skin warm through her shirt. She pushed her other hand against the nape of his neck and ran it through his dreadlocks, fingers curled.

Finally, wretchedly, Jandali pushed her off himself heavily.

He couldn't bear to see her face, the way it closed like a door locked from the inside. She was suddenly as blank as a Sentinel Soldier. He willed his own face to be that unreadable, but just couldn't manage it. It was anger that came more easily to him, and that was what he disguised himself with now.

Meviahd stared at him. He was scared to once more find nothing in her eyes.

Jandali willed his voice steady, accent-less, and said, "I am sorry, but what did you expect?"

That broke her for a moment. He saw her intricate look of pain before it smoothed over again.

"I thought-"

"You thought wrong," He told her. "Meh'vi, there is a great age difference between us. You are my pupil."

He hesitated and added, with just as much false conviction, "And you are an elf."

Her face didn't shift this time, but she took a step away from him. Her bare feet and her shoulder, scratched and caked with blood, stabbed at his heart. He felt physically nauseous. Meviahd turned her head away from him and Jandali thought, 'Good, let her think the worst of me.'

"We will find a cure," She said suddenly, so sure of herself. He hadn't half the faith she did.

"A cure will not close the gap in our ages, nor in our people." Jandali said. His stomach churned. In a second, he was going to be sick right there in front of her. Maybe she had thought he'd been holding her at arms' length because of the infection. And he was, mostly.

Mostly, even though he was, in his people's eyes, the equivalent of someone nearly twice her age. Mostly, even though it would be a great dishonor to his duties as the Jandali. Mostly, even though all he did was make people miserable. He didn't even deserve another chance with anyone, especially not Meviahd, who was the bravest person he knew. And still the thing that held him back the most was the terminal nature of his condition.

_Selfish, selfish, selfish._

Later, he would wish he had taken those few seconds of time to apologize to her. If he'd just reached across that space and held her, maybe she would have forgiven him. It was all he wanted at that moment. But the seconds ticked away and their silence was interrupted by Gabriel's sudden strangled yelp.

Both their heads whipped in the direction of the noise. As they did, a rustling of bushes alerted Meviahd to something behind her. She whirled only in time to see a human man rise from the beach scrub, swinging a weighted net. He tossed it expertly, and Meviahd was only a few steps into the beach when it hit her. Jandali froze in horror as she tumbled to the packed sand.

After that, Jandali was not terribly hard quarry for the men that rose from the bushes. A few rushed forwards and prodded spears at him, leering. More piled out onto the beach.

There were about twenty of them in all, carrying harpoons and nets. A couple hauled Gabriel to his feet between them, chuckling. One yelled, "Hey, it's the poof from the Bay." They began to jostle him between the two of them, plucking at his silk shirt and slapping his face roughly.

"Not so big without your money now." One of the men thrust his toothy face into Gabriel's, grabbing a fistful of his blond hair and twisting, "What, are you checking me out or something? Goddamn faggot, like what you see?"

Jandali turned his face away, disgusted. He caught sight of a grotesquely familiar figure making his way across the beach. Jandali was not mistaken. He had seen that face lurking in the corners of his nightmares for months now.

Jandali remembered his name. How he had said it to Meviahd that day in the Barrens cave.

_"Then remember well the name Marcus Fletchett. It will be your end."_

The human recognized him too, Jandali could tell immediately. The man's face split in half with glee. He strode through the sand and looked down at the netted bundle expectantly. His grin became more crooked.

Marcus Fletchett was wearing finery befitting a general leading his troops. He was obviously the leader of the crew. Jandali caught sight of a long line of hunched figures roped together down shore, slowly filing towards them. The men around Jandali, and those with the captured figures, were rough around the edges. But they all looked experienced. The trolls heart sank. These men were slave traders, come for the pickings at the burning Bay.

Marcus threw back his head and cackled mirthfully. He kicked Meviahd over onto her back. She tried to scramble away from him, but the net prevented her. She looked as if she recognized him as well. The human continued to laugh, planting a dirty boot firmly between her breasts and pushing her into the sand.

"Well," he said, "What siren has found herself in my nets today?"

* * *

Aw yeah, finally.

_Le romance._

Was this my longest chapter yet? Think so. It's second piece is soon to follow.


	20. Chapter 18, Part 2

Did you know this story broke it's hundredth review last chapter? I am astounded, incredibly grateful, and giddy with all that. Thank you everyone! And as always, I hope you enjoy this chapter as much as I enjoy reading your comments and hearing the things you have to say.

Cheers!

* * *

Jandali had to march the whole day with the taste of blood in his mouth.

They were strung up like the other captured, a sorry assemblage of human, dwarf, orc, and elf alike. Even a few undead and tauren dotted the chains. The only race notably missing from the group were trolls. The prisoners were under guard of men on foot, who ushered them along the barely-visible jungle path with threats from wooden clubs each one carried. The captains of the operation, Marcus, another human, and a sallow-face night elf, ran alongside the lines on the backs of horses.

He had ordered the three of them, Gabriel, Meviahd, and Jandali, to be marched together and placed under strict watch. Their hands were chained behind their backs. There were double the men following alongside them as they walked, leering at Meviahd and making kissing noises at her. Somewhere along the line, they had learned that this elf wasn't under the same rules as the other captives. Perhaps Marcus Fletchett told them they could do as they wished to her. Meviahd's blank face, imposing with cold Sentinel wraith, seemed to be the only thing keeping them at bay.

Gabriel had convinced them the worth of his life on a ransom plan he had worked out for himself years back, some two thousand gold pieces put away for it. Still, his right eye was swollen shut and purple blue. He looked furious.

The prisoners were not given water. As the sun started to dip low on the horizon Jandali felt himself burn with fever. His waist wasn't bleeding, but he knew it wouldn't be long. When the call came for the night's camp, Jandali sobbed with relief, falling to his knees where he stood. He panted like a man dying. Meviahd stood closer to him and pressed her warm thigh against his shoulder, and Jandali sobbed again with something she would never know wasn't pain in his wounds.

He composed himself within seconds and allowed the men to pull him to his feet and wrench him to where they planned to stake them for the night. The ties were merely a deterrent, of course. Their chances of escape in chains were slim. There were still guards to be posted throughout the night, awake and ready.

The three were led forwards by a few separate groups of guards now. The men holding Jandali stopped briefly to chat with a few others as they set camp, and Meviahd grew further away from him in the crowd. Jandali shifted anxiously in place, then stopped cold when he saw Marcus ooze up beside her.

Her guard stopped. They were close enough for Jandali to hear Marcus say, "You remember me, don't you, elf?"

Meviahd turned her head like a bird. She regarded him quietly for a moment before replying, "Of course. That was a day not easily forgotten."

"Yes, for myself as well." Marcus sneered, "You robbed my mother her son, and made a bastard of Antwon's own boy."

Meviahd nodded evenly, "There were many things lost that day, as I remember it."

The way she said it, Jandali thought of how her face had saddened when she'd held her hand close to his broken tusk and told him, "_Savage is the Alliance, too._" As if she'd never realized before.

"But if I recall, you were told we wanted no trouble." When she spoke again her voice was so quiet that Jandali, even with a troll's hearing, almost didn't catch it, "What you did to him on the rocks... It is a day that haunts my nights. Even now I cannot comprehend the heartlessness it would have taken."

Marcus barely paused, but his smile turned oilier. When he spoke again his tone had changed to something else entirely.

"Oh, I will give you something new to haunt your nights tonight, my sweet."

Jandali's skin crawled. Rage, red and hot and thick, began to pool in his throat. Barely registering his guard, who still held his chains loosely and chatted with his friend, Jandali began to surge forwards.

As the tension on the chain tightened, the guard noticed. "Oy, ye' old bastard." He growled, tugging, "Where do you think you're going?"

At the same time, Meviahd regarded Marcus, her blue eyes glowing like cold fire. When she spoke again her voice was slightly raised, but calm and clear as a bell. She said to his stunned face, "I killed your brother, and you're going to _fuck me_ for it?"

Marcus's mouth hung slack. The guards on either side of Meviahd paused awkwardly and looked up at their commander. Even Jandali, who was fighting his captors in a rage now, oblivious to the cane blows raining on his head, stopped short.

"How brave of you," Meviahd said quietly.

"Have her at my tent by the time I get there," Marcus spat, reaching up to tweak Meviahd's ear. She flinched away from him, her face hard, "But take your time, boys."

Jandali fought against his captors so hard they had to knock him out. The commotion he made disrupted the entire campsite. Meviahd caught sight of him and held his eye until someone hit him over the head with a cane. In the background, before he blacked out, he heard Gabriel saying, "By the Gods, Jandali, just stop. There's nothing you can do, just stop-"

* * *

He started awake, gasping as if he'd never get air in his lungs again. The back of his head felt huge and overwhelming. It _throbbed._ Jandali was staked with his hands still chained behind him. There was a night elf guard standing with his back to Jandali, absently running a whetting stone across his sword. A little ways away Jandali could see Gabriel tethered the same way he was, though the human was actually tied to a long train of captured slaves. Jandali was singled out.

His mind reeled, but not with panic. He was calculating. The shaman was all reflex now, honed like a jungle beast. Watching the guard closely and ignoring his aching head, Jandali began to shimmy around in the dirt. He stretched his arms to their fullest extent, muscles searing, until he heard a _pop_ in his shoulder. Straining further, the troll managed to hook his feet under his bound hands. He rolled his shoulders and brought his sore hands to the front of his chest. The chains rattled.

How long had it been. Minutes? _Hours?_ Where was Meviahd? Jandali shifted his clicking shoulders back into place and stood up. The manacles on his wrist were hard edged steel, and rusty in places. Perfect. Jandali glanced up at the guard and began to slowly grind the manacles across the bandages on his still-bare hip. The linen shredded easily against the splintered metal, even with Jandali's delicate movements.

The bandages fell away from his already sore skin. He winced at the sight of the irritated red flesh, bubbles the size of cherries rising around the leaking spear wound.

Deep breath. Here we go.

Jandali placed the manacles against a tight, puss-filled sore. He began to grind at his skin. Faster now, no longer trying to keep his chains from clinking together. The sound of them jingling echoed across the camp. The guard closest to the shaman turned, his face pulled in a scowl, already spitting out, "'Ey! What do you think you're-"

The elf went silent. He'd seen the red carbuncles spreading like wavering arms from around Jandali's wound. The guard's face went white.

"You're infected," the guard said, watching Jandali with horror. The troll ignored him, slathering his hands with blood from his own side. Louder, the elf yelled, "He's infected!"

The result was instantaneous. Slavers that had previously been lounging in the sunset heat sprang to their feet, heads whirling. The captured slaves also struggled to stand, tipping each other with their chains and tugging at the stakes they were tied to. Jandali's only hope was that someone didn't have a gun or bow to pick him off with before he did what he had to do.

Meviahd was still missing. In his head, Jandali heard Marcus Fletchett say over and over, "_Oh, I will give you something new to haunt your nights tonight._" If he looked across the nights' lodgings, Jandali could see the three largest tents at the very center of camp, the most protected area. Marcus would be in one of those.

Maniacal laughter bubble up from the troll's throat. Thick blood dripped from his hands and ran down his leg. The slaves had managed to tug up a few of their stakes and were running in the opposite direction from him. As if he were a monster.

A strange smile would not stop tugging the corners of Jandali's mouth. He was still laughing when he ripped his chained stake from the ground and tackled the nearest guard, thrusting his bloody hands wherever he could reach. Berserker rage and something else he'd never felt before drove him like an animal. He screwed his thumbs in the screaming elf's eyes, even as the man aimed a stab into at him. Terror and pain threw his slash wide.

Jandali rolled off the man, leaving him writhing and clawing his eyes on the ground. Got to give them a show, after all. Better that they want to stay away. But somewhere else in his mind was something that enjoyed the feel of the man helpless under him. Something that enjoyed the blood on his hands that wasn't all his own.

The guards had found someone with a bow. Jandali glimpsed the human from the corner of his eye by the way he was moving, a slink across the campgrounds with his crossbow tucked close to him. The troll grit his teeth. If they shot him now...

There was a commotion in eastern part of the camp and suddenly, as if some flood wall had burst, there came a contingent of Night Elves. Some were mounted on the backs of sabers, other ran alongside them and fired bows.

That couldn't be right. Disoriented, Jandali could only stand and stare as a night elf huntress pushed her polearm through one of the slaver's necks. Another was already swinging her axe down on the slaves' chains, freeing whole lines of them. For a moment Jandali felt hope buoy his heart, but it was a stupid thought. The same night elf with the polearm swung her spear around and killed an orc slave without so much as a thought.

Remembering himself, Jandali looked up quickly to find the man with the crossbow, but he had disappeared. And it wasn't a bad idea. Tucking himself low against the ground and closer to the tents, Jandali began to run towards the center of camp. Anyone he met on his way steered well clear of him and his swollen waist.

The first tent Jandali entered turned out to be the night elf's tent. There was some type of radio perched on his cot, and he was trying desperately to make a call with it. He was so intently focused he didn't even look up as Jandali pulled his tent flap back. The shaman hesitated, then gently replaced the fabric.

As he crept alongside the canvas, Jandali saw the other human captain slink from the back of the tent on the end of the line. The man darted off into the sea of thrashing Night Elves, who spotted him and gave chase. In the commotion, Jandali loped across the gap between the rigged fabric and pressed himself into the middle tent. The tent with Marcus Fletchett in it.

The troll steeled himself and pushed through the flap, no stealth about it. Whatever Marcus had been doing before, he most certainly was on the alert now, with all the screaming outside. Jandali had told himself that no matter what he saw in that tent, he'd keep a level head. At least level enough to do whatever he had to do to pry Meviahd from his hands, whether it was violence or diplomacy. But he hadn't prepared himself enough.

The first thing Jandali saw was the purple-skinned body on the ground. A female body, with half her face stabbed off and her limbs crumpled under her in death. Jandali nearly sobbed with relief when he realized it wasn't Meviahd.

A black voice said, "Put that tent flap down."

There was a white magelight contained in a bauble hanging from the tent's center. By it's cold light, Jandali could see Marcus Fletchett straddling Meviahd's bare-chested body on his cot. He was holding a dagger that curled like a snake against her neck, a drop of blood beading at the tip.

Jandali did as he was told. He could see Meviahd's shoulders shuddering with her every breath.

"Why are you all covered in blood?" Marcus demanded. Jandali just stared at him. Obviously the human had been interrupted by the Night Elf who lay dead on the floor. Marcus must have killed her, then figured it would go better for him to hold Meviahd as a hostage.

"Hey, answer me!"

There was a livid burn on left of Meviahd's ribcage, as if Marcus had lit his hand with conjured fire and pressed it to the side of her breast. Jandali's vision went red.

"Hey!"

"Hey," Jandali responded, his voice at a normal speaking level. Even Marcus gave pause to this, a confused look glazing over his face. Jandali cocked his head to the side. He felt mad, but he felt like a creature to be reckoned with.

"Why are _you_ all covered in blood?" The troll asked.

Marcus barely had time to manage a look of annoyance before Jandali barked out a word of power. It was a spell for lightning and energy, and a simple one at that, but there was crack in the air as he said it. Rage had made him powerful. The spell burst to life beside Marcus's head, throwing blue sparks across his face. He shrieked and fell sideways.

And that was all Jandali needed: for the knife to be pulled from Meviahd's throat. Then he was after the human like a rabid dog. Marcus didn't have the time to right himself before Jandali was on him, long troll limbs flailing. The shaman raised his manacled wrists and brought them down on Marcus's face. His nose crunched.

"Please!" Marcus yelled. He was holding the dagger still, but loosely, as if he knew it was useless. Jandali felt his head swim. He was sitting on the human's chest, there was nothing the man could do to him now.

"Please?" Jandali repeated. His felt more laughter twist from his throat like leather-winged bats. "Please? _Please_?"

Jandali was yelling now, screaming the word 'please' over and over until his throat was raw. With every word he brought his manacled hands crashing down onto the human's face. The stake swung around on the length of chain from his cuffs, bashing both Jandali and Marcus with every new blow.

Marcus stabbed him weakly in the collar bone, then the shoulder, then the hollow under his arm where the skin was close to his ribs. Jandali didn't care. The knife biting into his flesh barely felt like anything at all against the feeling of his heart beating a tattoo into his chest. Every time he brought the heavy metal cuffs down into Marcus's pulpy face, he felt a little bit more like he had everything under control.

Marcus had stopped stabbing him a couple of minutes ago. The troll ripped a breath into his lungs and looked down as if seeing the body under him for the first time. Marcus was no longer recognizable as himself, and barely as anything human. The space where his face had been looked like a fruit that had been crushed into itself, bruised skin collapsing around a massive oozing crater. Jandali's front was just coated with blood.

He looked up suddenly, blinking as if emerging from sleep. His head snapped to the cot. Meviahd had sat up, her knees pulled up against her bare chest. Her hands were still bound behind her back. She looked unnaturally calm about the mutilated mess Jandali had made of the human's face. But when Jandali found her glowing eyes, he saw them crack like mirrors.

"I need your help tying my shirt back up," she whispered, dropping her head. Shuffling forwards on the bed, Meviahd placed her feet on the ground gently. In the magelight Jandali could see a smattering of dark bruises across the creamy lavender skin of her chest. He averted his eyes, cheeks coloring, embarrassed both by the sudden realization that Meviahd was shirtless as well as how it made him feel.

Not that he felt that way for long. There was nothing arousing about the way her body couldn't stop shaking. When he stood and drew closer to her, he could see how much it shamed her to have to ask him for help. How, when he lifted his cuffed hands alongside her to grab the shirt bunched around the manacles at her back, she flinched away from his touch. Jandali swallowed. Of course, she would practically hate him now. He couldn't blame her.

Marcus had ripped all the buttons from her white linen shirt, so Jandali tied it into a knot snug across her chest. It took an uncomfortable amount of time, with his own hands still manacled. He could see another burn on the side of Meviahd's bare stomach. The shaman wondered again at how long he'd been out.

Someone threw the tent flap aside, entering sword first. The interloper was a white-haired night elf with a strikingly familiar face. Jandali dropped his hands from the front of Meviahd's shirt as if he'd been stung.

"_He's a friend,_" Meviahd said automatically, then louder, "_Ahdriel?"_

"_Meviahd,"_ the elf hesitated, her sword wavering. She turned her ghost-eyed look to Jandali and her face hardened. Finally, she pointed her weapon at Meviahd, "_Promise me you will stay here, and I will believe you."_

"_I promise." _The words had barely left Meviahd's lips before the other elf was gone.

"Who is she? Where's she going?" Jandali took in a shuddering breath and glanced at the body formerly know as Marcus Fletchett. At it's ruined face. His eyes passed over the other body on the floor, the unlucky night elf missing half her own visage.

This sweep of the room ended on the livid, shining burns puckering Meviahd's chest and stomach. Jandali thought of how Marcus had been straddling her when the troll had walked in. He wondered how long Meviahd had to endure that before the camp had come under attack. The human's hands on her, up and down. Marcus and his hollowed out face, dripping gore.

Jandali stumbled to the corner of the tent and was violently sick to his stomach, dropping to his knees and sobbing again between heaves. Meviahd, with her eyes still bone dry, stood and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder as he kneeled. It was eerily similar to how she had stood next to him just a few hours earlier, but this time he should be the one comforting her.

_Selfish, selfish, selfish._

"_She is my sister," _Meviahd said in Darnassian. Her sounded voice godawful tired, "_Other than that, I do not know."_

Meviahd was an outlaw amongst her own people for the death of Antwon Fletchett. Jandali wondered if her political pardon as the Jandali's apprentice followed her even into the tangled mess of the Stranglethorn jungles, or if their unintentional night elf saviors would demand justice upon a betrayer of the Alliance.

It was not long before the elf returned. Jandali had tried to pull himself together, wiping his mouth with the back of hand. He was still sticky with carnage, his infected waist still un-bandaged. When the Sentinel saw him she didn't even bother trying to disguise the look of disgust on her face.

"_You are the Jandali?"_ She demanded him in Darnassian. Her mouth stumbled over his foreign name.

Jandali nodded at her warily. When she didn't respond to that he said in Darnassian, "_I am."_

The Night Elf seemed satisfied with this. She stepped aside, gesturing with her sword and pulling the tent flap back. Her eyes would not meet Meviahd's.

"_Then the Plague Minister will see you."_ She said.

* * *

Oh Jandali, you big baby, you cry the most of out everyone.


	21. Chapter 19

Mm, there's something about rainy days around this time that just knock the drive right out of me. I had a hard time working out this chapter, because there's actually so much going on behind the scenes, and it's hard to know what to show and what not to. Hopefully it works out.

* * *

Meviahd tried not to stare the entire time at the red sores all down her sister's neck.

When they stepped from the dark tent and into the moonlight, it quickly became apparent that Ahdriel was infected. Blisters trailed, barely noticeable, from one side of her mouth and down her chin. There they grew larger in size down her delicate throat, until her collarbone where they were as big as peach pits.

When Meviahd turned to Jandali, he was looking out across the camp, watching the freed slaves in particular. He would not look at her. Meviahd remembered how his eyes had burned in the tent, and how his hands had trembled when he'd fixed her shirt. She had glanced quickly at his closed face as he'd tied the knot, and she'd seen his disgust. As Ahdriel led them through the ruined, mostly subdued campsite, he tried his best not to touch her.

Janda thought of her as a girl and, specifically, an _elf_ girl. He was embarrassed by her affection. Meviahd felt something hard and sharp settle into her stomach, and she willed herself not to think about it.

Ahdriel guided them, mostly by sword point, to a path farther outside of the camp. At the foot of the hill there were a pair of huge cats, tethered to a tree. Ahdriel untied to reigns of one, then offered the other to her sister. Meviahd took it uncertainly.

Swinging into the saddle, Ahdriel said in Darnassian, _"If you would like, troll, I could truss you up on the back. But it is not a long ride, and I heard trolls were good at running."_

Meviahd swallowed a lump of anger down her throat. Ahdriel, at least, was yet to indicate that she was under arrest. It didn't seem wise to irritate her sister. Choosing her words as if picking berries from a thorny bush, Meviahd said, "_He is wounded, sister. He could take my mount, I'm sure, and-"_

"_I will walk," _Jandali cut in. He spoke his Darnassian crisply, mostly without accent. There was a cold fury in his voice that Meviahd doubted her sister would pick up on. He lifted his chin like a chieftain and said to Ahdriel, "_Lead the way."_

"_Don't be stupid," _Meviahd hissed to him in Orcish, drawing her mount up beside the limping troll. Ahdriel shot her a look of alarm, probably recognizing the gutteral language, but Meviahd pressed on. "_You're hurt."_

"_We're all hurt," _was all Jandali would say, clenching his teeth and averting his face. As they rode, Meviahd caught the flashes of scarlet in his dark eyes. He moved with muscles taut from rage.

Meviahd never would have believed him capable of it, but he walked the whole way. His progress was incredibly slow, and by the time they reached their destination, Ahdriel looked annoyed and impatient. But Meviahd was impressed with how he kept his pace steady. His face remained mostly impassive, even as his limp worsened.

The clearing they were in now was not far from the slavers' site, but had obviously been there longer. The tents were of much better quality, and there were even a few wooden shacks. The main structure, however, was an enormous canvas tent the color of a storm cloud. It was here that Ahdriel led them, dismounting and leading them again with her sword.

Inside were a large assemblage of night elves, male and female, seated on a round, low couch around a crystalline table. Their heads turned at Meviahd's entrance as if on gears. She felt her face and ears grow hot. She knew how she looked, with her torn shirt and the new purple bruises adding to her necklace of greenish, day-old discolorations from the Naga. The sticky burn on her stomach looked like a bright red eye.

Meviahd swallowed and tried to hold her face the way Jandali held his: with not a crack on it. But this reminded her too much of the meetings her mother used to call her into, where her sisters and the city heads would be present. Everyone scrutinizing and judging.

"_Meviahd Moonweaver?" _A voice asked. It was a strong, clear voice like a deep bell. The speaker stood and Meviahd was startled to recognize him.

"_Pretus?_"

"_The Plague Minister,_" Ahdriel said, an edge to her voice, "_And you would do well to_ _address him with respect."_

"_Meviahd Moonweaver is the Atal'Dali, the apprentice to the Jandali,"_ the troll said suddenly. All the elves were mostly staring at him, and the gore dripping from his front. His broken nose was bright purple and green on his cyan skin. Jandali continued evenly, "_And you would to well to address her with respect."_

Ahdriel had nothing to say about that. She fell silent, and everyone turned back to Pretus the Plague Minister, waiting for a command. He was just as good looking as Meviahd remembered him, though she hadn't thought about him in a long time. Pretus had glowing amber eyes, a strong chin, and rich red-purple skin. His green ponytail had grown since she'd last seen him, and his presence was a little more imposing, but other than that he had not changed much.

"_What are you all sitting there for?" _He demanded, "_Clearly she has been mistreated amongst the wretched slavers. Someone fetch her some proper clothing, and free her from those chains."_

Several of the elves stood at once to carry out his bidding. Ahdriel herself beckoned Meviahd outside the tent so that she could find a rogue to pick the lock of her manacles. In one of the shacks, they gave her a dove grey robe that cinched neatly around her waist.

A basin of water was laid out for her to wash in. Meviahd used it to scrub the sticky blood from her hair and face, but really she wanted to just crawl into it. What she wanted was hot water, scalding water, that she could scour the human's touch from her body with. She shuddered.

It was only a few minutes before she returned to the main tent, refreshed and a bit more presentable looking. When she entered again she saw that the elves had moved on the low couch to allow Jandali to perch on the very end. His manacles had been removed, but otherwise he was still shirtless, bleeding from several wounds, and covered with drying blood.

Meviahd's jaw worked with soundless fury. She managed to cool her voice when she said, "_I did not realize bandages were in such short order. Or is Kaldorei hospitality not as I remember it?"_

All the heads in the crowd moved, either looking down or again to Pretus. The only one that did not move was a person with his back seated to her, next to Jandali. He had an unnatural bright head of blond hair. The man's shoulders shook with laughter. He turned, and Meviahd realized why he had looked so strange: because he did not have elven ears. It was Gabriel, smiling at her despite his black eye.

Someone passed a roll of bandages down the line and Jandali took them as if accepting a royal offering. The elves watched him with their glowing eyes as he wound the bandages around his waist. Their looks were not friendly. Meviahd felt a sudden horrible shame. She could just imagine their thoughts about what a terribly primitive being he must be, all covered in blood like that. Getting blood on their furniture. As if they even knew why, or knew any better.

Meviahd padded to sit on the couch, dropping gently beside Jandali. He gave her a look, taking in her silk robe and washed hair. An expression of betrayal crossed his face, more raw and open than Meviahd felt able to handle. But it was gone as suddenly as it came, replaced with his political mask. She'd seen that before.

"_You're infected, troll."_ Pretus announced, opening the conversation. "_You probably know what that means."_

"_Not as much as I would expect you to, _Plague Minister_. A title given out of necessity in these times, I assume."_ Jandali offered him a dark grin. He was all business now. "_I've heard nothing but rumors and heresy. Please, put a man's mind at rest. Tell me what you know of it."_

Pretus sized Jandali up for a moment. The elf's gaze darted quickly to Meviahd's, then away. The pointed looks Pretus had been giving her were not lost on Meviahd. He remembered her as much as she did him, and he would get his answers in the end. That's how he was, as she recalled. At least he seemed more civil towards Jandali.

"_The disease kills the bearer within a few months." _Pretus began. Meviahd couldn't help herself. Her head snapped in Jandali's direction, heart freezing. Still standing behind her, Ahdriel shifted uncomfortably.

Jandali's face did not change. He did take an unnaturally long time to intone, "_Go on_." But otherwise he stared straight ahead, even though he must have seen Meviahd turn to him.

"_It is transferred through bodily fluids. Blood, urine, saliva, anything." _Now Jandali did look at her. It was a quick flick of his pupils, and a subtle widening of his eye in profile, but Meviahd caught it. He was, she guessed, thinking of when she had tried to kiss him. Meviahd was thinking of it too, but not because of how close she'd come to being infected. It was because she couldn't stop thinking of it, and how drastically she wanted to take it back.

"_Other than that, we do not know much. It has shown in the naga, harpies, satyrs, trolls, and of course the night elves. There were few rumors of blood elves with the disease, and of a few humans, but none are proven yet. The symptoms include the tell-tale rash, and in more developed cases, hysteria, violent behavior, and mood swings. Eventually, the nervous system just shuts down." _Pretus's handsome face did not smile, but showed some misplaced amusement as he said, "_That would be why the burnt out husk of what was called Booty Bay isn't still crawling with naga. They all dropped dead after the attack."_

Meviahd didn't find that funny at all. Down the line of people, Gabriel made a quiet noise of pain and crossed his legs.

"_Naga, harpies, satyrs, trolls, and night elves." _Jandali repeated. He sucked on his teeth for a moment before saying evenly, "_You lot are still all ignoring it?"_

"_Pardon?" _Pretus was the only one talking, despite the ten or so other elves in the tent, but all of their faces reflected this same hostile question.

"_That this disease is only affecting descendants of trolls." _Jandali said simply. The statement had an instantaneous, violent effect on the room. Several of the elves jumped to their feet, already with protests on their lips. A few fingered the hilts of swords and daggers. Jandali sat stone faced under their attack, his eyes locked with Pretus's.

The big night elf held up a hand for silence, and with a little murderous mumbling, the crowd settled again.

"_I will not sit here and debate with you on that topic. No, not even if I had the time. But I will say this. What you have heard is indeed heresy, if that is what you have been led to believe. If I were you, I would return to my home and spend my time with my loved ones. What little time I had left."_

Jandali barely nodded. He said, "_Ignore it as long as you want, then. But I know what I say isn't just rumor. I saw for myself, written in ancient glyphs on a cave wall in the Barrens."_

Pretus's eyebrow twitched. "_I thought the deal was that we might trade information. Is there something you're not telling me?"_

"_Nothing you don't already know."_

"_Good," _Pretus leaned forwards, looking over the faces of the rest of the assembled elves when he said, "_Because we did just rescue you, and we have agreed to allow your fugitive apprentice her freedom. When you have tried our hospitality such as that, Jandali, I would hate to think that you were bending my trust as well. With this plague, drastic times call for drastic measures."_

There was a threat in there, somewhere. Later, Meviahd would remember it and wish she'd caught it sooner.

* * *

They were escorted down to the Wild Shores the next day, where ships occasionally made a shaky dock to deliver the Plagueminister's supplies. Pretus himself accompanied their escort, though he would be going no further than the Shores. His caravan planed to stay another few weeks researching in the jungle.

Pretus was clear he would speak no more of the infection. His knowledge, he said, belonged to the Night Elf nation, and to the Alliance, and regretfully he could not divulge it.

A makeshift dock had been set at the tip of the Wild Shore, manned by an irate goblin with a bad case of trigger finger. When they arrived, he was shooting haphazardly into the trees and shaking his little green fist.

"Can't be too careful, miss," he said, tipping his hat at Meviahd, "Can't know what's infected, nowadays."

"No," Meviahd said, looking across the shore to where Jandali stood on the beach with Gabriel, "No you can't."

The goblin had gotten word, through some ridiculous radio contraption in his hut, that the ship had left a few hours prior and would be there shortly. The elves of their guard spread out across the beach to talk or survey the shore. A couple of the infected, Ahdriel included, formed a circle in the sand and passed around a strange smelling hand-rolled cigarette.

Meviahd had never seen her sister smoke. She tried to catch her eye, but Ahdriel refused to look at her. She'd been doing so ever since the night before. Meviahd hadn't thought it would affect her, but it hurt. Ahdriel was a piece of a faraway home that Meviahd had been gone from for a long time.

"_Meviahd_," said a familiar voice. Pretus was at her arm, his expression surprisingly uneasy. It took Meviahd a moment to realize that he was nervous. He smoothed a hand along the hair at the side of his head and said, "_Would you speak with me a moment?_"

She hesitated, then allowed herself to be led around the corner of the hut. Pretus straightened the collar of his leather vest and said, "Atal'Dali, _eh?_"

Meviahd nodded, rolling the word around in her head. She hadn't even heard the title until that night. Jandali had insisted that his role wasn't all too important to their world, but more to the troll community. And yet Pretus knew of it.

"_Yes,_" she responded, speaking easily with him in Darnassian. Hearing his accent, crisp as bitting into a Darnassus apple, was refreshing. "_Plague Minister, huh?_"

"_It has been a long time, Meviahd. A long time. I find I missed you, though I hardly remembered until now. Is that strange?"_

He was so frank. Meviahd swallowed, speaking quickly so the conversation curved like a snake. She also remembered how easy it was to be caught off guard by him.

"_Perhaps, but not as strange as the situation we find ourselves in now. Pretus, please. If there's anything you didn't say, I beg-"_

He held up a hand to silence her, frowning for a moment. "_We haven't long, and I cannot tell you, so let us not waste time. Last I heard of you, Ahdriel was telling me you were declared a traitor. You can imagine my surprise when the troll told us you were his apprentice... How do they treat you, Meviahd? Are you well?"_

"_I'm fine. Really," _the muscles around her mouth felt tight when she said, "_They're not the way you think, Pretus."_

"_Ahdriel told me how she, er, found you in the tent."_

Meviahd remembered Jandali's hands dropping from her as if she were hot as a brand.

"_Did she tell you about the dead human on the ground, too?"_

"_Seems every time the Jandali and you are found in a transgression, there is always a dead man to blame."_

Meviahd inhaled sharply through her nose, and Pretus studied the wood grain of the hut beside them. He laughed then, passing a hand over his chin.

"_Yes, this is exactly how we used to fight. Appropriate, as we are on opposite sides now. A shame."_

"_It doesn't have to be sides, but I am sorry." _She hesitated, _"I am in the Barrens now, in a new neutral town there. Jin'Jeda. Visit me sometime."_

Pretus snorted, "_Unlikely. But if you do need me, I will be here for a few more weeks. Ahdriel spends much time in Ratchet, you may send word through her if you like."_

Meviahd nodded stiffly. A voice from shore came not a few seconds before the sound of a bell, ringing over the waves. The ship had arrived. Meviahd peered around the hut, searching the figures standing on the sand.

She found Jandali, but he was not looking at her, or the ship. What he was looking at was Ahdriel's circle of elves, still smoking by the waves. In his eyes was an intense hunger.


	22. Chapter 20

Super grateful for all the reviews lately. They've helped me immensely with updating. Just started working 45 hours a week between two jobs so, ugh. But, I am excited for these next two scenes, as for they were almost completely unplanned and were just written on the fly. I had a ton of fun writing them. Hope you guys have as much fun reading them.

A special thanks to Du Tapis, who left a damn insightful and concise review on the past chapter. (That's a positive 'damn', in case that wasn't obvious. I can never be sure how much of voice transitions into text, especially when I'm not writing it like a story...) I want to go through and specifically answer everything you pointed out, but I don't really feel like this is the place, so I will say this: Your critiques helped me immensely with my characters, hot damn. I hope I can work on those flaws you made me face.

P.S. There are a couple glaring grammatical errors in some of Jandali's dialogue here, but they are intentional. I swear I'm not being a super lazy proofreader (sometimes) _;

P.S.S. Sorry to spam your inboxes with this, I've been reworking a little bit due to some confusion from readers.

* * *

Jandali took a raptor into Orgrimmar as soon as he felt well enough to ride, but every traveler said the same. The infected could live as long as a month, two months, maybe even ten weeks. But never six months.

By word of mouth, it was said that the sores spread from the infected area and covered most of the body within two weeks. After a month or two, the rage set in. Troll villages across Azeroth saw tribesman pitted against tribesman. A blood elf fresh from Northrend told Jandali, with a shudder, that he had seen a camp of night elves hacking each other to pieces by firelight.

Jandali had been infected something like six months prior. By all accounts, Jandali was the longest-surviving infected. He kept this information to himself.

It was only a week after their return from Stranglethorn that a messenger arrived, bearing a letter from Vol'Jin. Jandali opened the missive immediately, breaking the troll leader's wax seal with a grim face. It would mean travel, and traveling meant prolonged one-on-one time with Meviahd. That wasn't something the troll was up for quite yet.

After Stranglethorn, Meviahd was merely polite to him. She was friendly, to a degree, but no longer playful. She hardly ever joked with him. Sometimes he would see a hint of her Sentinel armor crack, but she would catch herself and pull back.

Jandali heard her door close downstairs at all hours of the night, but he had never asked her where she went.

A few days prior, Jandali had been out collecting pain-killing herbs in the golden Barrens plains. He'd gone to the outskirts of town land and was on his way back when he saw them, pressed close together and leaning against the side of one of the village houses.

Majir had one arm slung high on the wall over Meviahd's head. His other hand lingered on her waist. She had looked up at him and said something Jandali couldn't hear from the distance, her face open.

Majir had leaned down and kissed her. It was a familiar movement, one he'd obviously done plenty of times before. Meviahd had paused and leaned into him, and the big troll had cupped the back of her head with his hands, his mouth sliding fiercely against hers.

Jandali hadn't brought it up with Meviahd. Every time he sat across from her in their teaching sessions, all he could see was the way her lips had parted as Majir had leaned close.

Not that it seemed to be hindering her. Since they'd returned to Jin'Jeda, she'd poured herself into her studies as the Atal'Dali, and was learning at a ferocious rate.

"Someone die?" Gabriel leaned in close to read the letter, sloshing the bottle of wine he was holding in his hand. Jandali took it from him cautiously and threw back a swig. He grimaced and smacked his lips.

"Maybe. Message from Vol'Jin, a request for a meeting with the satyrs of Desolace. Seems they found some that aren't dead yet and want me to speak with them before they all go mad."

They were in Jandali's kitchen that night. Gabriel faced him across his table, playing a game of cards with himself.

"Afraid of the satyrs?" He asked.

"I saw Meviahd with her tongue down Majir's throat the other day." Jandali said, not looking up from the sheaf of paper.

Gabriel made a strangled noise, and behind Jandali, Meviahd said, "That's a really nice way of putting it."

He didn't turn around, but Jandali hunched his shoulders and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. Meviahd walked around the table slowly, taking the letter from in front of him. He hadn't even heard her door downstairs when she'd come in, and he wondered vaguely if she'd been stealthed.

"We're going to Desolace? Mm, for satyrs." There was nothing in her voice. Jandali chanced a glance at her, watching her eery glowing eyes fix on the paper.

"Very good, yes." His words were careful slow, "To speak with infected."

"Pretus said they couldn't figure out how the Desolace satyr contracted the disease."

Jandali sneered, "Pretus probably gave it to them himself so he could study it."

Meviahd looked at him sharply. Across the table, Gabriel pressed his lips together and seemed to shrink behind the wine bottle.

"Pretus is doing a lot of good work towards a cure."

"Pretus is doing a lot of awful specimen butchering, and I know because he told me to my face in the tent." Now Gabriel was making frantic waving motions with his hands, but Jandali ignored him. He pressed on, voice raising slightly, "You don't want to even hear the other things he told me, girlie, so I suggest you calming down and tell me what you're doing up here."

Gabriel groaned. Meviahd's eyes blazed, and she bit out her next words with steadily increasing edge.

"I came to show you these," she swung her arm and slammed a leather satchel onto the table where it coughed forth several books in different languages. Meviahd continued hotly, "But I can see that you're too busy being a miserable drunk, as usual."

"You shut up," Jandali snarled, standing so fast his chair slammed to the ground. The wine bottle tipped on the table.

Gabriel said meekly, "Come on guys, don't fight..."

"Why should I?" Meviahd demanded, ignoring the human as well, "Tell me one thing you've done since we've gotten back but drink and mope around."

"I'm fucking dying," Jandali roared. Gabriel and Meviahd both froze for a moment, "Do either of you understand that? I'm _dying._ So sorry if I'm 'moping around,' because it's fucking awful, and not everyone can just jump back onto their feet like you seem to do, Meviahd."

His voice cracked and he said, "Gods, girl, you think you'd at least give it time before you were all over him."

All the blood drained from Meviahd's face. At first he thought she was going to cry, but instead she hit him.

It wasn't a contained blow. Her balled fist bashed Jandali's mouth, and he tasted blood slicking his teeth. His head snapped around on his neck. When the stars cleared from his vision Meviahd was gone, and only Gabriel was left, looking incredulous and a bit amused.

"She split your lip," he said.

Shocked, Jandali touched his mouth and came away with red fingers. He mumbled to himself, "_Why did she...? Oh gods, she thinks I'm talking about- _shit_."_

He ran for the stairwell, stumbling down them two stairs at a time and ignoring Gabriel's confused calls behind him. On the floor below, Meviahd's half of the house suddenly seemed ominous and aggressive. He could hear her in her bedroom on the far side of the house, throwing clothing around and slamming things on tables.

For a moment he considered talking to after she'd cooled down. Meviahd's temper could have even rivaled his own. But he couldn't stomach the thought of her believing, even for a second longer, that he could have said such a thing.

She had thought he was talking about Stranglethorn, and Marcus Fletchett. As if Jandali would ever be cruel or callous enough to suggest that.

"Meh'vi?" He rounded the corner of her door and she launched something at him. Jandali instinctively ducked, hearing clay smash.

"That's not what I meant," he yelled. Meviahd reached out to grab another ceramic bowl from her bedside table, eyeing him pointedly. Jandali raised his hands in a sign of submission, "Really, it isn't what I was meant to be saying. I wouldn't ever... I would never have brought it up even. No matter how angry I was."

She lowered the bowl, but didn't put it down. "What were you talking about then?"

"Me," Jandali said quietly. He wrung the front of his linen shirt through his hands. "I was talking about me. I mean, you'd only told me a week ago, so when I saw you with him it, uh..."

What he wanted to say was that it hurt like hell. That, maybe, if she had waited a little longer it wouldn't be so fresh in his mind, and he could have endured it. Now it was just raw and open.

Meviahd didn't say anything for a uncomfortably long time. The look she was giving him made Jandali feel ill. When she finally did speak, her voice had all the welcome and forgiveness of a winter river.

"After what you said to me, you've got the nerve to tell me I didn't _wait long enough_?"

Jandali worked his jaw soundlessly, shredding the hem of his shirt.

"It's always about you." She said, her voice quiet now, "You fooled me before. Here I was, thinking you were this great hero, trying to find a cure for this disease. For your people. And you kept feeding me all those lines, about how being the Jandali was being a spiritual figure for the shamans and the trolls. Or how the Jandali united the warring races. I bought into it, so, stupid me."

She jut her jaw at him and said, "But, I know now. You were just worried about yourself. I'll be better than you, and I will do those things."

"That- that is n-not the way I feel about it-"

"You do a piss poor way of showing it, then." She turned away from him and began packing a leather knapsack on her bed with some of the clothing strewn around her room. Jandali wiped the blood dripping from his chin with the back of his hand. At least she'd put the bowl down.

"The letter, I think, said something about an entourage." Her words were curt, and she was not looking at him.

"Er, yes." Jandali frowned deeply, "Zuri will be organizing it."

"I am to assume Majir will be going then."

Another frown. After the fiasco with the naga, the slavers, and their foolishness in front of a strong branch of the night elf diplomacy, of course they would send more heavy protection. And, of course, Zuri jump on the chance to make Jandali miserable.

"Probably," he mumbled.

"Well, then I will see you in Orgrimmar. Three days, it said?" She threw the pack over her shoulder and looked at him as if daring him.

"Your studies?" He said weakly.

Meviahd's cold expression broke, and she looked immensely tired when she said, "I am just going to take a few days' break, if that is alright with you. I did not take one right after- you know. And I find I want it now."

"By all means." Jandali stepped from her doorway so she could pass through, swallowing hard as she did. She didn't seem angry now, just disappointed. Somehow that was worse.

"I am sorry I punched your mouth." She said, turning back to him with her hand on the knob of the front door.

Jandali shrugged, "I did kind of deserve it."

She gave him a fleeting, weak smile before shutting the door quietly behind her. Once he was sure she was far enough away from the house, Jandali groaned into the empty air. He slammed a fist into the door frame and hissed when his knuckles came away scraped.

"You really know how to impress the ladies," said a voice. Jandali snorted when Gabriel emerged from around the hallway corner. The human gave him an apologetic smile, and said, "I couldn't help but overhear."

When Jandali said nothing else in return, Gabriel cleared his throat and said, "I'm going to go back to Ratchet now but, ah, wait for me. When you go to Desolace. 'Cause I'm coming with you, 'cause I got some business there. You know. Fish."

Jandali couldn't help but smile, even feeling sick and tired as he did. Gabriel, as he remembered now, as a good friend.

"And, y'know, for the troll escort that might accompany me, there might be a reward. I do enjoy sharing my wares with my friends and," Gabriel looked up at him through those angelic blond lashes when he said, "Those Sweet-tooth elves were smoking the stuff for a reason."

And that was how Jandali ended up standing in a tavern in Ratchet, feeling guilty about the fair sized pouch of Sweetrot in his pocket. He remembered Gabriel saying, when they had first found him in Booty Bay, that the Rot was highly addictive. But he also remembered that it was said to be like being uninfected, and Jandali could feel the wound in his waist as clearly as he could feel any limb. He just wanted it to go away.

The troll rounded the corner of the second floor hall and walked straight into a woman coming the opposite direction. Jandali grunted as she bounced off him. Offering his hand to her where she'd fallen on the floor, Jandali found himself looking into a familiar face. Ahdriel.

The night elf sniffed and batted him away, standing on her own. The family resemblance of the Moonweavers seemed remarkable, at least between Meviahd and her sister. Ahdriel had the same salt white hair, though hers was pulled back in a waist-length braid. Their faces had the same squared, proud jaw.

Ahdriel cocked her hip and stared at him for a moment. Her figure was fuller, and her lips were thinner, but when she hooded her eyes like that Meviahd and she were almost identical.

"I need your help," Jandali blurted.

Ahdriel smiled wolfishly. She said, "Meviahd sure is a handful, is she not?"

The troll couldn't have been more surprised, but Ahdriel invited him back to her room. It was a communal sort of thing, she explained, where the innkeeper had allowed the visiting, infected elves of Pretus's party to stay in what used to be the servant's quarters. Ahdriel led him briskly to the back of the tavern. The room they entered was fair sized, with worn wooden floors and a squat, smoke-belching fireplace in one corner. There were a number of rolled out bed pallets strewn across the floor.

On one of them was a snoring night elf, his dry, chapped lips puckered with sores. He was half in and half out of the mottled brown and cream bed covers, but what Jandali could see of his bare skin was all coated with pustules and flaky scabs. The troll turned his head away, and Ahdriel pressed a finger to her lips.

"Maxilus does not have long for this world. Quiet, now, and let him have his peace. These days he does not get much." She dropped to sit on a bed roll on the far side of the room. Jandali sat cross-legged on another in front of her. He was struck dumb with the ridiculous of it, sitting across from Meviahd's sister while she began to roll a cigarette on her leg. Jandali realized it wasn't tobacco she was using, but Sweetrot.

"My sister likes you, doesn't she?" Ahdriel licked her cigarette to seal it, speaking between laps. She eyed Jandali like a hawk deciding whether a meal was large enough for the effort. "Meviahd always likes the broken ones. And that is what you look like, troll. Busted."

She lit the tip of her cigarette and took an immense drag from it, blowing the thick smoke from her nose. Then she offered it to Jandali. He could feel the bump of the Rot in his own pocket, but his hand wavered when he reached up. Ahdriel snorted.

"Well?"

"I, uh-"

"Yes, she does. I can see it on your face. You trolls are all laughably easy to read, you know that?" She shook her head, looking over Jandali's shoulder to the sleeping night elf. "You think you are too good for Sweetrot now, but once you get like him, you will not be. When Maxilus is awake, all he does it scratch, and scratch, and scratch. Those blankets used to be white. There is nothing left of the skin on his legs."

"You brought him here to die." Jandali said quietly, noting the emptiness of the room.

"Some at the camp ask us to end their misery for them, or they do it themselves. Those are the brave ones. Some wander into the woods to be alone, and some beg to come back to civilization to die. I brought Maxilus here so that he could smoke all the Sweetrot he wanted, and drink all the booze he could manage, and fall into a sleep from which there is no waking."

"You will kill him yourself." Jandali said. He didn't know how, exactly, but he knew it plain as day. Ahdriel smiled her wolf smile at him.

"If half his brain were not rotted away with The Growing Death, he would want it that way. Maxilus and I fought alongside each other for a very long time." Another puff. She leaned back onto the bed roll. "But what about you, do you like my sister?"

"It is, ah, not proper-"

"Let me show you something." Ahdriel stood and began to take off her shirt. Jandali froze in disbelief, then held up his hands in front of him as if warding off a blow.

"Waitaminute... I... Hell."

Ahdriel was wearing only a thin bra under her shirt. Jandali could see the expanse of her stomach, and the jut of her collarbones and ribcage. He stared in horror. Her entire left side was decimated with the infection, partially caving in on itself so that Jandali could count the individual ribs. Giant boils hung from each one like ripe fruits on a tree. From there, the infection spread like the spiraling arms of a hurricane, stretching out across her chest and stomach. In some places they were torn and bleeding, and in others they were surrounded by green and brown bruises.

"This is the step right before the horrible scratching part." Ahdriel put her shirt back on and sat down again, "You stay the fuck away from my sister."

After that, Ahdriel smoked her entire cigarette in silence. She dropped the burning end of it, which Jandali rescued, and then she began to speak to him again. She told him about being a soldier, and about how Meviahd was the youngest sister, and about how their father wasn't ever around for them when they were younger. After a while, Ahdriel was sobbing. She told Jandali about her mother's death and how they'd lost Meviahd right after, and then lost her a second time.

And finally, thankfully, she fell asleep. Drained, Jandali rose and excused himself from the room. The air outside the tavern felt raw and real in his sore mouth. His mind felt flushed and clear.

He threw the Sweetrot into the ocean from the very tip of the Ratchet docks. He considered jumping in after it, but decided against it. He wasn't one of the brave ones. Not yet, but maybe he could try, if only because she thought him capable of it.


	23. Chapter 21

Meviahd didn't sleep in Majir's bed, at first. He was a gentleman at the core, and when she showed up at his door carrying her backpack, he immediately offered her his guest room.

Meviahd would never get the chance to thank him properly for what he did for her that night. She knew where she stood. Meviahd and Majir had only been seeing each other for a little over a week, and showing up at his house like she did, he could have asked a lot more of her. When he brought her in a kerosene lamp and kissed her gently on the cheek for the night, Meviahd was surprised.

Surprised and a little guilty.

She felt as if Stranglethorn had dislodged something deep inside of her. There was the Meviahd who had left Auberdine planning to stand in the middle of Azshara, if only to hold a sword to the land that had killed her mother. And then there was the Meviahd who had been born of the ashes of Marcus's pawing hands, and even before that, on the day he had sawed off Jandali's tusk. Meviahd felt as if she'd been walking around with her eyes closed.

For the first time in a long time, she thought about her mother.

Ahnel Moonweaver had no choice but to be strong. She had been the single mother of four daughters, the head of a contingent of on-site healers, and a strong figure in Darnassus politics. Ahnel had coaxed talents from each of her daughters when they were at young ages, and had groomed them meticulously for the roles these talents would give them.

Ahdriel had been born a great warrior, and accordingly, Ahnel had raised her as a fierce, proud Sentinel. When her next two daughters displayed strong healing powers, Ahnel brought them up to be clinical and caring, and to value life. But Meviahd had been a more complicated case.

Ahnel was not familiar with subterfuge. She knew only face-to-face war, and the wounds that brave men gave other brave men on the field of battle. She had never been in the dark room of a sleeping target, or had to draw that last breath before slashing someone warm and surprised. She'd never had to slip out the window of a dead man and wonder how his family would find him in the morning.

Had Ahnel known what she had been sending her daughter into? Meviahd remembered the look on Jandali's face when she'd told him how young she'd started her work.

Laying on the bed in Majir's guest room, Meviahd threw her arm over her eyes and clenched her fists until her nails dug into her palms. It did not matter what Ahnel had known or not known. What she had been doing was what a mother should do: give her daughter a future. In these times, that was all you could ask for.

Besides, Meviahd reflected, her mother had given her stronger gifts than that. Ahnel had instilled courage in her children, above all else. It did not matter the foe you fought or the odds you had to overcome, you were always to face the challenge bravely. If Ahnel were here now, she would tell Meviahd to persevere. Whether it was in being the keeper of languages for the Dark Spear nation, or finding a cure for a word-wide epidemic, or being inexplicably attracted to some asshole troll. Have courage and _persevere._

That was why Meviahd could not stop. When she and Jandali drifted away from each other, she fixated on studying orcish and Zandali. When trolls in the village still stopped to sneer at her, she went out on hunting trips to fill the village coffers. And when Majir caught her by surprise in the smokehouse and put his arms around her, Meviahd kissed him back. No matter that all she could feel was Marcus's magic-hot hands burning her sides, she kissed Majir back. She would not let Stranglethorn affect her.

Meviahd slept in Majir's bed on the last night she stayed in his house, but they didn't have sex. His thick arms around her and the slide of his lips was almost enticing. But he made the mistake of slipping a hand under her shirt and up her stomach, smooth and slow. After that, Meviahd couldn't make her skin stop crawling.

She must have gone still underneath him, because Majir stopped not even a minute afterwards. Meviahd's words catch in her throat, and she choked on an apology. She felt her face burn with a sourceless shame. The troll eased off of her and settled under the blankets on his stomach, throwing an arm loosely across her chest. He gave her a drowsy kiss on the shoulder, his tusks bumping her neck.

The best and worst thing about it was Majir's easy way of underplaying any situation. Best, because Meviahd could pretend moments like these never happened, and that Majir hadn't noticed. But worst, because it allowed her to play him. Laying underneath the weight of his arm in Majir's bed, she wondered if how she'd feel about him if Jandali hadn't pushed her off on the Wild Shores.

"_A cure will not close the gap in our ages, nor in our people."_

No, she was better off anyways, with the way he was acting lately. Meviahd was almost convinced of this. It just wasn't enough yet to let her return to the two-story house on the other side of town.

* * *

They took a couple of raptors down the quick ride to Orgrimmar, earlier than even Jandali left Jin'Jeda. Majir had business in the city before they left. He ran a leather working trade on the side, mostly out of appreciation for the craft. And, he explained, a little rum money. Meviahd came for the brisk morning air, and because she couldn't imagine meeting Jandali at his house a few hours later.

Not that she expected a confrontation with him. It was all the things he wouldn't say that were worse.

Orgrimmar hunched like a beast by the river. That day there was an extra set of guards: ghastly Abominables with their stitched-together intestines hanging in trails by their feet. Meviahd felt her stomach clench at the sight of them. She had seen them from Devi Devi's back, but never this close before. They seemed even more confused by her presence, but the orcish Orgrimmar guards had been forewarned of her arrival, and merely nodded as she and Majir passed.

Inside, the city worked like a set of organs. Orcs, tauren, trolls, Forsaken, and blood elves all crowded the dirt paths, hawking wares, haggling, or showing off shining sets of armor. They gave Meviahd bluntly hostile looks, but the robe she'd been instructed to wear was keeping her safe. They was Horde red and Darkspear purple, colors for a protected emissary. There was some power to them, but Meviahd felt none of it.

There was a marked absence of trolls, even she could see that. Majir and she were almost something of a spectacle. For the first time, Majir showed some minor signs of nerves. This was from a troll who had never looked anything but 'vaguely interested' the entire time she'd known him. She'd seen him rush and dodge a boar almost taller than Meviahd herself, goring it with a spear until it squealed, and the entire time Majir had looked _vaguely interested_in what the boar was up to.

"My man not gonna like dis, all dis attention you get." He said.

"Your leather man?"

Majir shifted the pack on his shoulder and said, "Yah, he a secretive guy. Here, isn't that the poof over there?"

"Poof?" Meviahd followed the troll's long arm to where he pointed. They'd entered a tunnel into a crack in the earth, shaded from above by flapping leather tarps. The air was no cooler in the dry heat, though it was good to be out of the dessert sun. Straight ahead of them, in one of the corners of the bended fissure, Gabriel stood with another troll. Meviahd didn't recognize the muscular, blue-haired male. They seemed to be exchanging a rapid-fire conversation, their bodies slightly inclined towards each other like trees bending in the wind.

"Stick with him for a few while I meet my guy, wouldja love?" Before waiting for her answer, the troll kissed her on the cheek and whisked off. He wove like liquid though the crowd, and left his scent of leathers and tobacco hanging beside Meviahd.

She hesitated, eyeing the crowd and Gabriel decisively. Meanwhile, the troll seemed to have lost interest in whatever Gabriel had been saying to him, striding away from the merchant purposefully. Gabriel pouted, following him with his eyes for a moment before he caught sight of Meviahd. A huge grin spread across his face.

"Meh'vi!" He used Jandali's name for her, sweeping forwards and hooking his arm in hers. Orcs passing them on the path gave them dirty looks, which Gabriel returned with his beaming smile. "Meh'vi, just the elf I was looking for. What are you doing here so early?"

"I came in with Majir. He had business in the city before we left."

"Of course, of course," Gabriel was gently guiding her down the path, back out into the main cavern, the Valley of Strength, and up onto a lip of road that overlooked the huge clearing.

He was giving her a strange sort of look as they walked, so Meviahd asked lightly, "Did you come here for business too?"

"Business? My, no. I don't even know the men who work for me here, no no, not personally. And never would I be seen speaking with them!"

"Ah, I had thought that troll-"

"Him?" Gabriel threw back his head and laughed, "That meathead, dear, was a prospective date."

"Date?" She blinked at him. Gabriel paused in the path, his smile growing impossibly wider.

"Oh, elves. Do I have to spell it out for you? You see, young Meh'vi, when two people are very attracted to each other-"

"I know, I know what a date is. But I mean... Well, _he _was... He..." Meviahd struggled to find a way to put it politely. The night elf in her commanded she not ask at all. Gabriel looked wickedly amused. They were speaking in common, but while the surrounding inhabitants of the city couldn't understand them, Meviahd still blushed fiercely.

"He was a _he." _She finished lamely. Gabriel laughed again, throwing an arm around her shoulders.

"Oh_,_ _elves. _Poor Meh'vi, she doesn't even know how to tell the straight from the bent. What did you think Eyan was, good dinner company?"

"Does Jandali know?" She asked.

"I should bloody well hope so, after the time I tried to kiss him a good twenty years back and he socked me right in the nose. Laid me flat out, he did, but not the way I was hoping he was going to." Meviahd felt her blush increase in temperature. Gabriel continued, "You should'a seen him back then though. Let me tell you, damn. Not like the scruffy swamp rat he is now."

"Oh," said Meviahd, because that was really all she could manage to say. Gabriel clicked his tongue at her and she asked, "So does Jandali know you're _sindorei?"_

Gabriel looked up, suddenly sharp, before scanning the crowd around them with a furtive glance. He gave her a wink.

"Alright, but let's say goblins and Jandali are both really bad at telling age progression in human types. Not within twenty five years at least. And let's say my grandfather on my dad's side landed a good one, and I've been around quite a bit longer than I should have been already. But, you know, goblins don't live all that long. And if they were to say, think maybe a certain trade prince might live a certain number of years..."

He trailed off, giving her shoulder a gentle pat as Meviahd nodded weakly. Below them, in the Valley of Strength, a commotion began in the streets. It was a small happening, but the people hushed.

Seated atop a horned, skeletal horse, and followed by her gruesome entourage, was Lady Sylvanas Windrunner. As their queen passed, the abominations gathered around the doors rushed to join her, tripping over their innards in the dust. The rotting creatures and lurking beasts of enchanted bones set a chill through Meviahd. She imagined they never slept.

"She's not very unlike yourself, Meh'vi," Gabriel remarked.

"Like Sylvanas?" Meviahd demanded. She felt something twist in her stomach when she looked at the hooded figure of the Banshee Queen, with her ashy white hair and glowing red eyes. The damned scuttled around her ankles, but she held her chin high and straight.

"Of course. She was a night elf once, and now she is the leader of a people she used to hate. Damn good at it, too." He seemed to be closely studying the clouds in the sky, clearing his throat and remarking, "You know, Jandali has all faith you'll be an excellent him after he's gone."

Meviahd winced, "Are you going to tell me off now? Because whatever quarrels Jandali and I have are really between Jandali and myself."

Gabriel shook his head, clapping her on the shoulder, "No, little Meh'vi, I am telling you this between friends. I know Jandali can be a real prick, and I know he's not really the easiest person to talk to sometimes. But I also know how good he can be, and I'm guessing you can't have seen much of it."

She said nothing, watching the human in profile. Now that she'd guessed his elven heritage it was easy to see. A rarity, Gabriel actually looked serious.

"So, I'm steppin' in as a mediator between you both to tell you that this is the most fucked I've ever seen him, frankly. Not that it's any excuse for him to be an asshole to you, or anyone else, but... He might act all pissed off about it, but really, Jandali is scared of dying. Scared shitless."

Meviahd remembered Jandali's horrified pleas for mercy in the Barrens cave, and how he'd kept begging even when it was clear Marcus would not stop. To ask the enemy for your life was an ultimate dishonor, in night elf society.

"I'm scared too." Meviahd said very quietly. The arm around her shoulders tightened and Gabriel cooed under his breath.

"That makes three of us, darlin'."

They sat in silence for a moment. Meviahd found that Gabriel's arm around her shoulder was oddly comforting, and she leaned into it. The human didn't comment on it.

"Look," Gabriel pointed to the main Orgrimmar entrance, where a fair-sized group of trolls had just entered. There were about fifteen of them in all, some with their faces painted in fresh tribal marks, and all mounted splendidly on bobbing raptors. At the head of them, Jandali was three shades paler than his usual self. Someone, probably himself, had wrapped many of his wine colored dreadlocks with layers of orange or black yarn so that they stood stiffly from the back of his head. Even with the distance, Meviahd could also see a pair of rings circled in green and purple around his sawn-off tusk.

"Huh, they got all tarted up to impress the satyrs. Wanna know something else Jandali is scared shitless of, Meh'vi?"

"What?"

"Flying," Gabriel stepped away from her and bowed deeply, "And so I leave him to you. Have a _lovely_ time, and I'll see you and he in Desolace."

And without another word, the human stepped off of the lip of the path. He landed on the roofs below him as gracefully as a cat, sliding down the side and blowing kisses to the orc merchants shaking their fists below.

* * *

Meviahd found Jandali after the flight master had explained to her the intricacies of wyvern riding. His advice to her was mostly 'don't fall off and don't do anything stupid', though Meviahd would have hoped for more. The wyverns were absolutely fascinating to her, though the feeling wasn't mutual. Since they were an intelligent race, much like the hippogryphs, she expected them to show her interest. But the big cats mostly ignored her in their stables, chewing on gummy bits of meat from their bowls and half watching her through hooded eyes.

She'd grown tired of trying to excite them when Jandali entered the stables. The troll entourage was still gathering a few last minute supplies for their trip. He probably hadn't expected anyone to be about yet. Meviahd was in the back of the large room, but she knew it was Jandali from his limping step. Meviahd crept closer and heard him mumbling something in Zandali to the beasts, but it was too muffled for her to make out or attempt to translate.

One of the wyverns started when she neared it's cage, hissing at her. She saw Jandali's head swing around above the tall stable walls.

"_Throm'ka,"_ he called out nervously.

"_Aka'Magosh,"_ Meviahd answered, stepping into the open hallway that ran down the center of the stable. He looked nervous at first, but he gave her a crooked smile.

"I should have known, who else would be skulking around in here?" Jandali leaned against the stall again. Meviahd could see his clasped hands visibly shaking.

"Praying to them?" She asked teasingly, leaning beside him. Her light mood seemed to confuse him at first, but finally her snorted at her.

"Hardly. If there was a god of wyverns, I doubt he'd care much for me anyways."

"The Wind Rider told me if I didn't do anything stupid, I'd be fine. Think you can manage that, Jandali?" When he looked at her, she bared her teeth at him in a challenging smile. Jandali's mouth twitched, but he still frowned.

"Not really, no. Seems I've been up to a lot of that lately. But I'll make you a deal. I'm gonna try and not be a prick from now on, but you've gotta return ta the house and continue learning." He cleared his throat awkwardly, " 'Cause Loa know how long I'll be around."

She sighed a little, as if trying to clear the air. "Deal. But, so you know, I wasn't looking for a deal."

"Yeah, Meh'vi, I know. Tha's the good thing about you." He raised his hand and ruffled her hair nonchalantly, stretching and standing from the stall. As he did the sleeve of his shirt rose, and Meviahd spied the flash of white linen bandages wound around his upper arm. They hadn't been there three days ago.

She took in a deep gulp of air, let it out slowly, then said. "Nice hair. Did you and Gabriel have a sleep over?"

Jandali raised an eyebrow at her. And, finally, bared his teeth in a real grin.

"That doesn't mean a lot, coming from a girlie who looks like a shaggy dog."

Meviahd laughed lightly, running her hands through her growing spikes of white hair. For a moment they fell silent. Jandali licked his lips and opened his mouth to speak; Majir came stomping through the stable door, calling to the wyverns and setting the dozens of them all shrieking.

* * *

I had more to say, but I'm off rushing to work, so next time!


	24. Chapter 22

Merry Holidays! I hope enjoy this extra update:

* * *

Jandali felt every sliding, freezing second of the flight as if they lasted double the time. His mount was the very first to land in Shadowprey Village, so none of the men saw Jandali scramble off of his unimpressed wyvern. He nearly kissed the dirt beneath his feet, shuddering to attention only when a few trolls from the village came to welcome him.

Not that it mattered who saw, anyways. All the Darkspear trolls had heard their Jandali was a coward.

The rest of the troop landed not long after. Meviahd leapt spryly from her beast and turned this way and that, taking in the ashy grey beach and the little fishing village with wide, enthralled eyes. As soon as Majir's mount landed, she pulled the hunter around by the hand and began asking him questions. Had he been here before? Did he fish often? What was the Zandali word for 'fish'? Jandali felt a hand tighten around his heart.

Raptors were provided by the village. Jandali's little band left quickly, setting out across the monotone, dusty land without ceremony. Even Gabriel, who had been the most cheerful at the start of the trip, had subdued. He rode next to Jandali, looking strange atop a crimson raptor, but Jandali appreciated his company. Meviahd rode next to Majir.

For the first half the day they made steady progress through Desolace. The travel was extremely tough, and Jandali was soon grateful for their large entourage. The first leg of the journey was through the Mannoroc Coven, which crawled with demons, and soon afterwards they were threatened by the starving kodo that haunted the nearby graveyard.

Creeping by the massive kodo bones, the group rounded the plateau of Ghost Walker Post and came face to face with a group of well-armed night elves.

Jandali screamed out a halt in Zandali seconds before Meviahd's voice joined his, echoing his sentiment in Darnassian. The trolls of their entourage pulled their mounts short, some still brandishing their weapons, others now beginning to relax. They had seen the tauren standing amongst them, and noted their armors woven with branches. A gathering of the Cenarion Circle.

Meviahd shrieked. Jandali's heart skipped a beat, swinging towards her, but he realized it was not a sound of terror. The elf jumped off of her mount and went sprinting across the no-man's-land between the two groups.

Perched behind the tauren and elves of the Cenarion Circle was a creature even Jandali could recognize. Devi Devi. The hippogryph opened his massive wings, cawing and clicking his beak as Meviahd threw her arms around his feathered neck.

"Dat woman, de hell she doin'?" Majir's mount danced underneath it's nervous rider.

"That is her father," Jandali offered him, smiling when Majir only looked more confused. The shaman felt a certain smug pride in knowing something of her that Majir did not. He would have liked to take more time to savor it, but the elves and tauren of the Cenarion Circle were looking increasingly confused, and annoyed for it, though they took no steps towards Meviahd or Devi Devi. The group of trolls were growing antsy as well.

He found an elf amongst them with a pair of shoulder guards that seemed worthy of the title of leader, and called out to him in Common.

"Well met, Cenarion Circle. We don't look for a fight, and only mean to pass through to Sargeron." He nodded to Meviahd and Devi Devi, "One of ours had been united with an old friend, excuse her excitement."

The elf raised an eyebrow and seemed to consider Jandali's words, probably concentrated on the 'one of ours' comment. Finally he gave a solemn nod.

"Well met, Jandali. Friends of the Circle have always been friends of ours."

Jandali smiled wryly. He had done a good amount of work for the Cenarion Expedition when it had first started it's exploration of Outland, mostly between them and the native draenei, many of them Broken. But the Cenarion Circle had a tendency to be more than a bit overzealous. When campaigns in Northrend had begun, the D.E.H.T.A. demanded Jandali ask the Tuskarr to cease their whaling, and he was done with them. The Cenarion Circle could claim friendship with him, but he knew it was not a tight one.

"Sargeron, you said? I feel inclined to inform the Jandali that Sargeron is most inhospitable now. _Un'thea'shal_ runs rampant amongst the fiends." The elf eyed Meviahd in a way that made Jandali think he might have told them just for her sake. He gave Gabriel a curious look as well, but the human puckered his lips at him in a kiss. The elf looked away again swiftly.

Devi Devi took off without warning, startling both groups. Jandali grinned when he caught a flash of white on the hippogryph's back: the grey Desolace sun on Meviahd's hair. One of the elves in the crowd murmured in Darnassian, "_He does not act his age."_

Jandali thought, 'That makes two of them.' He gave the Cenarion Circle elf a final nod and slapped his mount's reigns. The trolls followed his lead, for once, speeding their raptors to match his.

* * *

For the last leg of the trip, Devi Devi flew over the troop, sometimes constantly circling, and sometimes disappearing for a time and doubling back on them. Jandali wished for a moment that he could be up there with her, and then remembered suddenly that 'up there' was a place very far above the ground. Better keep both his feet planted firmly on land.

The sight of Majir, craning his neck towards the sky and pressing his lips into a thin line, was enough for Jandali.

Sargeron rose on the horizon like the back of a crooked beast. As the hour passed and the group drew closer, it was possible to see the flashes of noxious purple moving across the land. There were satyrs, but not too many. Jandali had passed Sargeron on horseback years before and remembered how the ancient night elven ruins had crawled with the beasts. Now the hill seemed empty, save for the a few sentries patrolling near the largest intact structure high on the slope.

Their aim was to make camp for a week, if that was what it took. It was a horrendous amount of time to even think of spending in the ashy, neutral nothingness that was Desolace, but it was what Vol'Jin decreed. They did not expect to weasel information from greedy satyr in just a day.

The last time Jandali met with Vol'Jin (only a day before leaving for Desolace), the troll leader had seemed nearly overwhelmed. Not outwardly, of course, but Jandali knew the political landscape well enough to spy the desperation in such questions as, "Do you think they'll have any answers?"

It was not Jandali's job to think, it was his job to translate. To the troll leader, he could only offer a hopeful shrug, hyper-aware of the new set of bandages circling the fresh boils on his arm.

At the foot of Sargeron they stopped and began to set a makeshift camp with crude tents, digging a fire pit from the loose ash at the center. Devi Devi's shadow passed over Jandali's raptor seconds before the hippogryph landed. Meviahd slipped off of his back and rushed through the working troop of trolls. The trolls stopped to give the great beast neutral looks, their long ears raised in interest.

Devi Devi mostly ignored them, swiveling his head above the crowd with that otherworldly presence that hippogryphs, dragonkin, and the other sentient elder creatures seemed to possess. Unapproachable. The hippogryphs eyes lighted on him and Jandali saw his gaze settle, calculating for a moment. Devi Devi inclined his antlered head in a deep nod.

Meviahd had found Majir and led him back to the hippogryph, introducing them. Her smile was a nervous one, girlish even. The sight of it prickled Jandali's stomach. He turned away, almost happy to spy a satyr making it's way purposefully down the side of the Sargeron hill. At least it would distract him.

The satyrs had been forewarned of their coming by a message delivered some days prior, penned in Darnassian by Jandali himself. They had been paid as well, though they hadn't asked for gold. Booze, and a lot of it, had been the currency that had bought the satyrs. Jandali could hardly blame them. He was sure once his case of the plague progressed, he too would want only to drink himself into a stupor. Not that Jandali needed to be playing politics with a bunch of drunk-off-their-asses satyrs.

The satyr approaching them now stopped a fair distance away, shifting it's weight apprehensively from foot to foot. Jandali called out a greeting to it in Darnassian, and it came a little closer, but not too much. The attention of everyone in the camp was now focused on it.

"_Lord Xavanius will see you now, and not another time. He permits you two companions, and no more than that." _The creature tossed it's head arrogantly, "_You will come unarmed. You will not speak unless spoken to. You will address Lord Xavanius as 'My Lord,' and will prostate yourself before his feet."_

Jandali's mouth curled more and more with each demand until he was fully baring his teeth. But that was politics: House Rules. Jandali barked out, "_Give me but a moment."_

_

* * *

_

"And for the love of the Loa, don't rush them unless your sure it's absolutely necessary. The moment you attack them, they'll turn and rip us to shreds." Jandali paused his speech for a moment and switched to Darnassian, "_But Devi Devi, if you think they're going to try anything, you'll have to act fast. Even one of them gets their claws into us, we're infected."_

Not that it mattered to Jandali. He swallowed and looked into the faces of the surrounding circle of men. They stood messily in the half-finished camp, most of them giving him skeptical looks. Even Jandali knew how dangerous it was to agree with the terms they'd been given. Satyrs hardly ever negotiated, and he knew if he tried here, there wasn't much keeping them hanging on. Bourbon wouldn't entice them forever. What else could you use to bribe a few dozen dying beasts?

They'd outlined a loose plan, but it wasn't much. In the case of betrayal by the satyrs, the chances of them making it out alive were slim to none. But he had to try, he had to try. He dispersed the men with a wave of his hand, catching Zandali a whisper floating through the crowd.

"The Jandali crazy suicidal, mon.._."_

"_You don't have to come," _Jandali said quietly to Meviahd in Darnassian. She was standing at his shoulder, looking appropriately respectful, but she broke into an exaggerated frown when he said it.

"_Of course I am coming. I am no coward."_

"_It is a risk, to bring both the Jandali and the Atal'Dali into such danger."_

"_Please don't insult me. I'm not letting you go in by yourself."_

He wouldn't be by himself, but he didn't tell her that. And because it warmed his heart so much to hear her say it, it hurt twice as much to do what he did next.

"Majir," he flicked a finger towards the hunter, "You're lucky number three. Shed your weapons and get ready."

The hunter actually looked surprised. He gave Jandali a suspicious glance and merely nodded, starting to pull the knives from his belt. Jandali felt, rather than saw, Meviahd's frown turn towards him again.

"_You hate Majir."_ She said in Darnassian.

"_I'm trying to do good things from now on, I think you forgot."_ He gave her a shallow smile, pulled tight at the edges with nerves. She gave him a real one.

The three of them set off for Sargeron just as the sun was beginning to begin it's descent. Not that there was much in Desolace, but the loss of even the little amount of sunlight that filtered into the land was a substantial one. Jandali conjured a glowing ball of light for them, and the trio strode a fair distance behind the messenger satyr, following him into the hill.

Sargeron was a haunted landscape. It's bone-white ruins lay on their sides in the ash, some of them half submerged like pale whales breaking the surface of a grey ocean. Meviahd was taking in the marble with wide eyes, probably recognizing their night elf origin. At first the white stone buildings were bare, but the farther they strode up the hill, the more littered with satyrs they became.

Every satyr was infected. They leered from around the pillars with open hostility, their yellow eyes glowing. Shaggy-furred arms and legs that were outlined against the white stone showed bumps and irregularities. Pustules hung from some of their pocked faces. Boils rose on the thin flesh between their knuckles and the bones of their hands.

Here and there were piles of the dead. In the dark, they were shapeless forms with splayed limbs, unmoving and barely recognizable. But Jandali knew, even at a distance, that was what they were. Looking upon them was an instant punch to the gut.

Their ascent of Sargeron ended at the very top, where one of the massive ruins had remained somewhat intact. They were ushered into this roof-less building not only by the messenger satyr, but by hoards of the beasts that were beginning to gather around it's edges.

Jandali felt his skin prickle when a few hooked claws brushed his arms and shoulders. Without thinking, he reached an arm out to pull Meviahd closer, more in front of him. Majir growled of warning from the back of his throat, and Jandali couldn't be sure whether it was directed at him or the satyrs.

Their guide stopped in the center of the stone floor, turning to face them. At the edges of the ruin, satyrs clustered in the gaps of the pillars until it was as if they stood in a breathing, stinking church of matted fur. The satyr in the center announced, "_My Lord Xavanius."_

The satyr stepped back and pushed one of the surrounding slabs of rubble with a swift, sudden movement. The chunk of pillar slid across the floor as if gliding on ice, flashing blue momentarily and leaving behind a powdery magic smell. From the floor sprouted a sapling, bobbing up higher and higher, and framed by a pair of glinting ebony horns.

The horns and the sapling were followed by a sneering face, followed by a satyr with an impressive, bright purple mane. Lord Xavanius, the current satyr lord of Sargeron, had a small tree growing from the left half of his face.

This was less enchanted than it sounded. It was centered on Xavanius's cheekbone, splitting the dusky purple skin of his face in huge patches. The sapling rose higher than the satyr's horns, budding with dark azure leaves. The roots broke the flesh around his nose where his flesh pulled taut, and ran like snakes under the skin of his chin. Some pieces looked scarred over, but others were fresh, and bled freely. In the satyr's half opened mouth, Jandali spied the hairy end of trailing roots, and gagged as if he could feel them in his own mouth.

Xavanius was also obviously inflicted with a newer infection of plague. It sprouted from several areas on his right arm, which also were curiously growing with a few tiny tree sprouts. This same arm was devoid of fur and covered in stitching. It was clear from some of the wounds that they were old in places where the sewing was gone, leaving behind a criss-cross scar. But in other areas there were still matted black threads, and the wounds underneath leaked yellow-green puss.

One could wonder how he had acquired those, and Jandali had his guesses. Lord Xavanius inspired in Jandali a new horror for the things people could do to each other. He dropped to his knee and bowed before the satyr.

Meviahd followed him not a second afterwards, kneeling on the cold marble beside the shaman. This could be easily overlooked, but Majir remained standing, staring into the satyr's face with an unreadable expression. Maybe it was fear, or maybe it was the sudden killer's instinct. Meviahd coughed quietly and Majir finally dropped to his knees.

Lord Xavanius sneered. Jandali's tongue burned, but he remembered the rest of their terms, and kept his mouth shut. The satyr lord finally stepped from the hidden staircase, brushing the little messenger satyr aside roughly. Xavanius raised the same arm higher to indicate them as if graciously, and Jandali realized that the satyr's stitched, sapling covered arm was dead. It could not move.

"_The Jandali,"_ he inclined his horned head very, very slightly towards the troll, "_And guests. Welcome to Sargeron, though I doubt you do find it welcoming. We are most honored to have you."_

The last part he said with a patronizing smile, only semi-completed due to a trail of little roots puncturing the dead half of his lips. The satyrs gathered at the perimeter of the marble ruin laughed and jeered, weaving and leaning against each other. They were all visibly, incredibly drunk.

Lord Xavanius took a few steps closer to them. He had not yet given them his permission to rise, so Jandali did not, but he did speak. Jandali knew a thing or two about satyrs, and he knew they were usually one card short of a deck. Xavanius was calm, put together, and oddly formidable looking even with half a dead body and a big tree taking root on his face. And that meant one had to be careful.

"_My thanks, Lord Xavanius, for seeing us. The Horde and it's allies are grateful."_

"_I am sure, the trolls being a bulk of their guard in many cities. But the time for you and yours grows short," _the satyrs outside snarled and hissed, and Xavanius said in a bored tone of voice, "_You may rise."_

Jandali and Meviahd both stood, Majir hurrying to his feet after them. Xavanius smiled, perhaps realizing that Majir could not understand Darnassian. The hunter's eyes rolled wildly across the satyrs. He looked oddly small without his crimson pet raptor by his side.

Xavanius took a few more steps. He was uncomfortably close to them now, even though he still stood almost eight feet away. When he spoke his tone was mild, almost private. The satyrs around hurried to hush and hear him, but they mostly failed. "_And look, you brought a woman amongst us. There must be much faith in you, Jandali."_

Xavanius was smart even for a smart satyr. Jandali had never heard one so well spoken, but he knew there were some. He snuck a glance at Meviahd, but she seemed unfazed by the satyr's veiled threat.

Realizing that Xavanius was waiting for him to say something, he cleared his throat and said, "_I am afraid you're wrong, Lord Xavanius. There isn't much I do find faith in these days. But I do not believe you will attack me."_

Bald statements like this usually impressed satyr, who found worth in bravery almost as much as viciousness. Even if it was stupid, warped bravery. Xavanius was thankfully no different on this front. He snorted a small laugh.

"_Yes, but let me tell you a secret. They will." _He tilted his head very slightly to the satyrs outside, "_And no trolls sitting at the bottom of the hill, or big bird-horses flying up in the sky will stop them._ _But that isn't what I what. Probably, this isn't what you want. If you were to follow me, I could help you."_

"_Why would you do that?" _Jandali stared into the satyr's eyes because he didn't want to look at Meviahd and see what she was feeling. Maybe he didn't want to see how much her glowing, soulless eyes looked like the satyr's chalky, haunted, _kaldorei-_shaped ones.

"_Because I want revenge,"_ Xavanius snarled, his voice rich with hatred. Jandali believed him, but only because of the eloquence of that rage. That couldn't be faked.

He was running on gut instinct, but Jandali gulped and said, "_Lead the way."_

Lord Xavanius limped slowly back towards the staircase, stopping at the top to allow them down it first. First Meviahd, then Jandali, then Majir, and finally Xavanius himself. In the cold stone hallway below, the satyr reached up and pulled the magic that slid the chunk of rubble back in place. And then they were sealed there with him.

The lord of Sargeron said, "_Let me show you my well."_

_

* * *

_

And now a word about Cataclysm, since that all came about:

I haven't been playing WoW because I had to shut off my account. Yep, the bills are obviously a needless expense that a (currently-taking-a-year-off) college student shouldn't actually be paying for. So, goodbye Warcraft. I knew ye well.

I have been trying to keep up with Cataclysm happening, however, as I'm extremely interested in it. My next story will probably take place in a Cataclysm environment (Have you seen what Garrosh does to trolls?). However, the timing for Gunmouth is more on the side of late Northrend campaign stuff. There's two reasons for this. One being that I felt there was too much going on to start integrating Cataclysm events as they gave us updated information. I tried to stay current, and even gave hints of Cataclysm (for instance, the Cenarion Circle is in Desolace in this chapter because the land is showing it's first stages of change.) But I didn't want to overdo it.

The second reason is really Jandali. I don't think he'd take very well to a Cataclysm era environment at all. The prejudice against the trolls would probably kill him. And if that didn't get him, the new emphasis on shamans would. He's actually really self-conscious about the fact that he's actually like, a level 8 shaman.


	25. Chapter 23

This chapter took longer than usual to get out, sorry about that. The next chapter is actually what I couldn't wait to get to, and I had this one less planned, so it took me forever. Sorry guys D: But there's been a lot of new readers lately, and the lovely comments keep pouring in. Thanks so much, everyone! Hope you all enjoy.

* * *

Meviahd knew from the start that it was a bad plan. It was true, the trolls had the manpower to easily slaughter the diseased, demented satyrs, and Devi Devi would have been able to fly to their immediate aid. But Meviahd knew that all it would really take was the shallow scratch from a diseased claw, or even a bit of blood splashed from a satyr's wound into her eye. She was lucky enough that she hadn't been infected by the naga back in Booty Bay.

The problem was that Jandali didn't think the satyr would attack them, and Meviahd was pretty damn positive they would. If Meviahd was right, and there was even the most minor conflict, it was unlikely Majir and she would escape untainted. No matter how many back-up plans they had in place, they were in the thick of it, and there were simply too many.

A rogue never went unarmed, and a soldier did not walk into a firefight without a trick up his sleeve. Or maybe it was the other way around. Regardless, Meviahd could feel the pinch of the blade she'd slid, wrapped in leather, between her leggings and the skin of her thigh. They hadn't been checked very well by the messenger, but even if they had, Meviahd doubted they would have caught the tiny, paper-thin knife.

She had seen Majir's wink back in camp as he'd dropped a few little goblin cherry-bombs down the front of his pants. A bit unorthodox, but still effective, if it came to that.

These few slight insurances might have been enough, had it not been for Lord Xavanius. Meviahd would hate the admit it, but Xavanius _scared_ her. Meviahd hadn't felt that kind of fear in years, sick and boiling deep in the pit of her stomach. She found she couldn't look into the satyr lord's tree-ruined face for more than a few seconds.

Down in the cave, Jandali looked directly into the satyr's eyes and said, "_Show me_."

Xavanius began to speak as he led them further down the winding tunnel. The walls were tight but the roof of it was oddly high, giving Meviahd the simultaneous feelings of being very small, and being caged in. Majir fell in step beside her and she began to translate for him very quietly under her breath.

"_We used to push warriors into our well," _Lord Xavanius began, his tone almost genial, "_When the Point would take ours, we would take some of theirs, and make them our own."_

"_You pushed their men into your well and transformed them into satyrs?" _Jandali said.

"_Precisely. When our ranks ran thin. The well had been corrupted with fel energies long before my reign as Lord, but it was not until some months back that the it grew... More unstable."_

The tunnel opened suddenly into an enormous cavern, at the center of which was a well. There was little else than that, save for a few more chunks of rubble and pieces of the ruins. The roof above the cavern looked made from laid bricks, as if it had once been opened to the sky but was now closed. The well itself glowed a strange, sickly green-yellow. The traditional archway that usually hung over it had been removed, and the stones around it's edges had been carved with unrecognizable runes.

"_Fel," _Jandali grumbled in Darnassian, and Xavanius's broken lips pulled into a smile.

"_Indeed. But I began to notice a change in the satyrs that we created some months back. A disfigurement, if you would. They grew illness in bubbles underneath their skin, and died not soon afterwards. I myself had never touched the well, just as I had really never liked the thing, but I did command my people cease to touch it as well. Still, the disease spread."_

Here the lord paused and looked away again. Meviahd got the impression of a thoughtful expression on the creature's face, though for a satyr it seemed unlikely.

Lord Xavanius said, "_Sometimes we would take maidens from the Point and pluck the flowers from between their legs."_

Meviahd stopped translating, leaving Majir staring at her expectantly. Jandali, who had been slowly creeping towards the tainted well, froze. He craned his neck, glancing back over his shoulder and saying, "_Excuse me?"_

"_You heard me," _Xavanius waved his living hand through the air, "_We stole women from the settlement, I need make it no clearer. Now and again we all would fall asleep, and a she-elf lucky enough to live might slink off and back to the Point. Such things happen, with tricksy little elves."_

"_And that's how Nijel's Point became infected," _Jandali looked murderous, but he said nothing further on it. If the Lord noticed, he didn't comment. Instead the satyr strode to the well and leaned down, dipping his live hand into it. The green water stuck to his furred paw, glowing, and Xavanius smiled at it almost absently. He was not afraid of it: anything it could do to him had already been done.

"_But I did not touch the well before, and whenever I did partake in a succulent fruit from the Point, she was always claimed as mine and mine alone. I do not let the others touch what was mine."_

"_Pretus the Plagueminister," _Jandali said, his voice almost conversational, "_That is how you contacted the disease."_

Xavanius looked up sharply, then smiled again. "_The Jandali is a bit too smart for his own good."_

For a moment the world rushed away from Meviahd. Certainly not Pretus, who she remembered as a young man picking apples in her mother's gardens. Not Pretus, who had gently brushed her hair when she'd returned from an assignment. He was an honorable man, and though he'd had a reputation for being firm, he had never been cruel. Had he?

The satyr lord was talking again. Meviahd struggled to catch up. By this point Majir had been left far out of the loop, having lost his translator. He was so on edge Meviahd wouldn't be surprised if, any minute now, he went for the cherry bombs stowed down the front of his pants. She coughed out a quick word of comfort to him, but even to her it sounded hollow.

"_I was captured during a raid on the Point. Pretus and his men took myself and a few others for his experiments. When he found that I was yet untainted, he forced me drink another of my men's blood, and soon I was taken with the disease myself." _The satyr stretched his ruined mouth, "_But he also tested my face with what I imagine he thought was a cure. The result was clearly not what he had intended."_

"_You escaped."_ Jandali stated.

"_I tricked him to thinking I was weaker than I actually was. His little trees did do me some good, but for a short time. Now, I fear this one does deplete me quicker than the disease itself." _Xavanius pointed a dark claw to the sapling growing between his horns, "_Even now I feel it press against my skull, tickling the back of my eyes. It will kill me soon, indeed."_

Meviahd realized why he scared her so. Ever since they'd begun talking to the satyr lord, a rage had been building in Xavanius's voice. It was so faint at first Meviahd had only felt it, like a burr needling her every time he spoke. But now it was there, sure and thick.

"_The trolls approached me promising their petty bourbon bribe if only I'd talk to their Jandali. Tell him how I had gotten my disease, give him some hint. They would not have guessed, oh no. But I remembered the Jandali from years before my lordship, when he had visited here before. You struck me as a sharp man. And now through you I will have my revenge."_

Xavanius moved faster than Meviahd ever guessed he would have. The satyr lord crossed the room in two long leaps and was on top of Jandali in an instant. The troll let out a strangled yelp as the satyr lord tackled him to the ground. Xavanius shook with laughter, taking Jandali's whole face in his massive, clawed hands and holding it there. Under him, the troll gasped on his damp, shaggy fur.

The moment Xavanius moved, Meviahd and Majir had too. Meviahd drew her knife, but she'd only just gotten it out when the satyr hit Jandali. Majir was a bit quicker. He had struck a match against his cracked leather armor and had already pulled a little bomb forth, but he hadn't lit it. Meviahd realized he hadn't planned on anyone being so close to the satyr. The explosion could just as likely kill the troll.

While they were frozen, Xavanius rolled off of Jandali, as quickly as he had hit him. The troll sat up, coughing, and Xavanius stood with his mad smile still stretched across his face. The satyr flicked some of the green water from his hand and wiped it across the back of his mouth, bending little saplings against his lips.

"_Oh,_" Meviahd said quietly. Why else would he have done it?

"He's trying to infect you," she called to Jandali. She wondered what he would do with that. Surely, if the troll hadn't been diseased beforehand, he would have been now. Jandali eased himself up, careful with his wrapped waist, and laughed nearly as loud as the satyr had.

"_Well," _Jandali said finally, "_I wonder how long I have now."_

"_Long enough to catch Pretus, and take some sweet revenge on the man. He has slaughtered your kind as well. Was a little troll girl, not very old at all, all tied up with me in the cages." _Xavanius turned towards Meviahd, his tone frightening, "_She was not long for that world, as far into 'La Grippa' as she was. I couldn't let her die without knowing a lover's hand, now could I?"_

And that was when Majir threw the bomb. It bounced off of Xavanius's shoulder and blew up midair, tossing the satyr backwards. The hunter started forwards, drawing a knife Meviahd had not even known he had stowed in the lining of his vest. The blade was no wider than her finger, and looked clear as glass, swirling with a faint yellow enchantment. Majir reached Lord Xavanius's prone form, splashing through the puddle of blood that had already formed around the body, and turned the satyr with his boot.

There was a hole blown out of Xavanius's chest, open and oozing like raw meat to be roasted. But Xavanius was still alive, and when Majir moved him, the satyr shook with mad laughter. Even as Jandali yelled and ran towards them, it was too late. The satyr lord had more fight in him than Majir had counted on.

"_Idiot_," Xavanius sneered. The satyr lashed out with his good arm. He caught Majir around the ankle and yanked.

There was a massive splash of vile water. Majir had fallen backwards into the tainted well, spluttering, his knife clattering across the room. There were wordless yells on Meviahd's lips, and a dull roar in her ears, and she was vaguely aware that it was now she poised over the dying satyr with her own knife. Xavanius laughed harder.

"_You've only sped up what Pretus began," _the satyr cackled. "_But go ahead, girl. Finish me, for all those of your kind before you who never had the chance."_

A hand pressed her shoulder. Jandali had come up behind her to look down at the satyr lord. His face was pulled with a look of deep disgust, but he stayed Meviahd's blade with his hand.

Xavanius coughed and spat to the side, "_As if I figured you would truly come unarmed. I am not stupid. But you would listen to my tale first, that was enough."_

"_What if I don't seek out Pretus?" _Jandali demanded. He looked up quickly at Majir, who was standing knee deep in the well and just staring down into the green depths. The shaman lashed out suddenly, kicking the satyr in the stomach. Xavanius's giggling began again, hushed and bubbling.

By all rights, with his ribcage opened in front like a crushed nutshell, Xavanius should have been dead. He should have been dead before he'd tripped Majir into the tainted well. But he wasn't yet. His breath rattling, Xavanius declared, "_You will. Not for me, and perhaps not to kill the man, but you will try and stop him. Let the disease give you the hatred and urgency to end him. R-rage."_

His voice was becoming so quiet that Meviahd barely heard the last part. Jandali had leaned low to catch the gurgle.

"_M-m-more incentive?_ _He h-had made weapons. I saw."_

Then Lord Xavanius was no more. The tree atop his head shivered and went still. Jandali growled low in his throat and spat on the gently smoking corpse.

"I'm... Am I fucking..." Majir raised his hands, still standing in the well, and Meviahd turned away from him when she felt the confused look on his face stab her heart. Neither she nor Jandali could meet his eye.

"Don't touch Meviahd," Jandali said quietly, "You're covered in the well water."

A sudden anger passed over Majir's stricken face, like a storm over the dry Barrens plains, but it passed suddenly. There was a rumble, and far up the stone path came a voice calling Jandali and Majir's names. It was a troll voice, one of the guards they'd brought. Jandali called back, and a moment later the man came striding down the tunnel.

He eyed the body of Lord Xavanius with loathing, then said, "Y'alright, boss?"

"No," Jandali said, looking at Majir again. The other troll looked numb. "But what happened up there?"

"Ah, as soon as you all went underground with the big guy here, her horse hawk started picking them off." The guard pointed to Meviahd.

"He's not mine," she said automatically.

The soldier shrugged and continued, "We figured, weren't many of them. Might as well help him out and get the rest of them ourselves. Then we'd get this guy by surprised when you came up. Not like we planned, but... And yeah, Jandali, we were careful about their blood and everything, like you said. Didn't even lose a man. They were all drunk as hell, half of 'em were asleep by that point."

Jandali cast a dark look over the satyr's corpse by his feet. "Maybe somewhat according to plan, yes."

"Oi, Majir," the soldier said, "You doing alright over there? You look, hmm."

"No," Majir said, finally stepped from the well. He looked like hell. In a horrified, faraway voice at the back of her head, Meviahd asked herself whether the disease might get the hunter first, or if it were more likely he'd turn into a satyr. She had heard of fel wells such as these, but nothing of their mechanisms.

Nervous now, the soldier led them back up through the tunnel, rattling a quick summary of the battle off to Majir. The hunter had never looked so uncomfortable. He kept wiping his hands dimly on his damp pants and glancing around at the dead satyrs they encountered with equal parts fear and malice. Usually the soldiers would have been stacking the bodies, but Jandali's warning kept their from touching any of them. In the center of Sargeron sat Devi Devi, cleaning his claws in the ash and preening his wings.

Meviehd did not go down to meet him. Jandali walked ahead, lost in thought, and the soldiers followed him asking questions. She was left behind on the wide stone ruin at the top of the hill, but she wasn't alone. Next to her, but not standing too close, Majir drove his fist into a ruined column and howled.

She pressed a curled hand into her eyes, listening to Majir's heavy yell fade out to be replaced with his hoarse panting.

"I could'a sworn," his voice shook. Meviahd had never heard him lose control before, "All that blood, I could'a _sworn_. I definitely wasn't thinkin' he'd still be dat strong. I wasn't mindin' the well..."

Meviahd finally turned to look at him. He was nursing his bleeding knuckles, staring down at the ground, but her movement grabbed his attention. "We're going to find a cure." She said, "We've been searching for so long, it has to be close now-"

Majir jumped forwards and fastened his hand around her wrist, dragging her close.

"Don't fuck with me, Meviahd," he said, his deep voice low, "Come one now, girl, not after everything that be happenin' today. I _knew_ the Jandali was infected a long time ago. That's why his limp never healed up right, and that was why you never jumped his bones a long time ago."

Meviahd spluttered, tugging her wrist, but Majir was strong. He held her tight, his face close to hers so that she could see the scarlet flashing deep in the backs of his pupils. Meviahd realized suddenly that she didn't know Majir all that well. She'd spent time with him, and she'd been in his house, but she did not know the things he did when she wasn't around. She didn't know what kind of man he'd been in the years before she'd met him.

"If you gonna use me, girl, you gonna use me. But don't lie about it, too," he released her, and Meviahd stumbled backwards. Majir shook his head, his face white, "I'm not stupid, Meh'vi. I don't miss the looks he gives you, or the way ya turn ta him first whenever anything happens. I'm not stupid. Even around Jin'Jeda the trolls all know about how Jandali's a skinner."

Meviahd hadn't heard the term before, at least not the way Majir used it. She could tell from the way he hissed it from his teeth it was an insult. But she was too stunned by his sudden outburst to ask. Her heart ached.

"Hah, y'told me the Jandali said you reminded him of his wife."

Jandali had once, and in a moment of weakness, Meviahd had told Majir. The way Jandali, a few wine bottles in weeks ago, had said it to Meviahd: "How you remind me of her." With such despair, not even realizing Meviahd shouldn't know who 'her' was. Jandali had never told her himself, after all.

He'd mumbled then and trailed off, switching topics back to their lesson, but Meviahd had known what he was saying. The next day, she'd been sitting with Majir on the Barrens plains and it had just come out. What she'd really wanted to tell him was how she wasn't doing right by him.

"I don't see what that's got to do with it," Meviahd said after a moment.

"Meh'vi, _Meh'vi_," Majir actually laughed, high and furious the way Xavanius had sounded, "It's been so obvious for so long, girl. In Zandali, the word Meh'vi means 'gun mouth'."

Meviahd had known this. Jandali said her called her that because he said she was too quick with her sharp tongue, pointing and shooting without thinking.

"Jandali's wife didn't die in the war," Majir said. He smiled ghoulishly and formed a gun with his hands, straightening his index finger and middle finger into the barrel and curling his thumb into the lock. He put the muzzle of it deep into his mouth and twitched his thumb, as if shooting.

Meviahd just stared at him.

"Gun mouth," Majir said with another laugh.

It was too much. The cruel look on Majir's face, and behind that his awful desperation, and the smell of the tainted fel water still dampening his clothes. Meviahd couldn't take anymore. She turned and did something she hadn't done since she was a small child. She ran.

Down the ashy Sargeron ruins, across the white bone rubble and, into the blackness at the foot of the hill. At the campsite the soldiers were back, lighting larger fires now that their threat was gone. They were already breaking out bottles of spirits and talking animatedly amongst themselves. On the edge of camp, on the edge of them all, Meviahd drew her arms around herself and shivered in the darkness. Still up in the ruins, Majir began to howl again.


	26. Chapter 24

((It has been a long time, hasn't it. I really don't have an excuse per say on why I haven't updated in so long. After a while, things got away from me, time most of all, and I felt like I couldn't update this story. Mostly out of embarrassment for waiting so long.

But all your comments have brought me back, truthfully. It has literally been years, and people still seem to check this story, and beg for it to continue. I'm sorry it hasn't in so long. I still want to tell it. So let me try again, and see if I can give you all what you deserve to read. This story should have an ending.

Thanks, guys! Your continued support has truly made a difference. I want to update this as often as possible (though I am in my second semester senior year of college. Brace yourselves!). ))

Jandali felt her misery as clearly as he would feel a tooth ache. He himself could only muster up a certain disbelief, beyond his numbness. There had been no reason for the hunter to become infected this night. Even if he didn't like the other man, Jandali would never have wished it upon anyone.

They were seated around one of the campfires, Majir, Meviahd, Gabriel, the soldier from before, and himself. The soldier had given Majir a dark blue bottle of fiery tequila, all his own to drink, and the hunter had been chugging away at it ever since. At first Majir had pressed his lips to it and taken a swig. Then he offered it to Meviahd. It was pathetic to hear her murmuring, "If any of your saliva, I mean..." His face had gone dark with rage. They were barely half an hour in and the bottle was nearly half gone.

The hunter was short with everyone, even his soldier friend who'd given him the booze. Jandali almost felt some anger with him. Majir had no right to take this out on anyone, especially Meviahd. But Jandali couldn't bring himself to say anything to the grieving troll. He remembered the first night he'd found the little bubbles on the wound around his own waist. And later, when they'd discovered what the disease was, Jandali could recall that sinking, twisting feeling too. How he'd screamed himself hoarse in his room and collapsed later on his bed, drunk as he could manage.

Seated next to him, Gabriel broke out a bottle of rum he'd packed just for such somber occasions. Jandali and the human passed it back and forth wordlessly. Just in case he was wrong, and humans could contact the disease, Jandali never let the bottle touch his lips. He was even more glad he'd done it a few moments later, when Meviahd reached for it herself.

He'd never seen her drink before. Sips of wine, maybe, but nothing hard. She only grimaced slightly when she tossed the sickly sweet rum back, sucking her tongue and wiping the her mouth. Her eyes were hooded and wary.

Majir took a long gulp of tequila and ran a hand hard through his wild hair. He said, "Alright, I admit it. I was sellin' Sweetrot on da side."

"What?" Jandali nearly choked on the rum he'd been sloshing into his mouth.

"Sweetrot. The stuff the infected smoke ta make 'em feel better for a little." Majir wavered a little and peered across the fire. At first Jandali thought Majir was looking at him, but he realized it was actually Gabriel he was glaring at.

"Was workin' for him." Majir said. Gabriel froze, and across the fire, Meviahd stilled with the rum bottle suspended in the air.

Gabriel cleared his throat and said, "I've never met you before in my life, sir."

Majir laughed and said, "Nah, ya never met any of da lower pushers. But I got mah shipment from the goblins in Ratchet, and they got it from Booty Bay. Everyone knows Gabriel be da Rot Prince ah Booty Bay."

Gabriel had gone very quiet all the sudden. When the hunter spoke he glanced around at the neighboring campfires, then at the soldier sitting next to Majir.

"Is that what they say..." Gabriel mumbled.

Majir began to laugh again. Jandali saw Meviahd close her eyes and throw back another long pull of the rum before she passed it back to to shaman. Majir wasn't watching her. He was staring at Jandali, and the shaman got the sudden uneasy feeling that Majir wasn't at all himself.

"Wanna know somethin' funny, old man?" The hunter said. He took another pull of the tequila and said, "I used ta meet up with a few Allies dat picked up shipments from me, for a little extra coin. They'd take the stuff up into Ashenvale, I guess, sell it dere, and make the da whole trip again every week. The Fletchett brothers was good customers of mine, until Antwon got hisself killed, and Marcus quit..."

"Marcus Fletchett." Jandali repeated. He felt like someone had flushed his head.

"Yep," Majir smacked his lips, "Guess dey came and got the stuff from me, then ran into you two on their way back. Imagine my surprise, old man, when Meviahd tells me the human what cut off your tusk was Marcus Fletchett."

Jandali swung around to fix Meviahd with a glare, but she was staring doggedly into the fire. He wondered how much else she'd told the hunter. What did Majir know about him that Jandali wasn't even aware of? How he'd cried when they'd sawed off his tusk, or how he couldn't cast a spell to save his miserable life? Had she told Majir how Jandali had pushed her away on the Wild Shores?

"You were selling Marcus Fletchett _Sweetrot_? So he could resell it to the elves?" Meviahd hissed suddenly, her head raising as if waking from a dream. Majir nodded, his smile grim. He looked oddly proud of himself, now that he'd admitted it all.

"I never met anyone before," Majir said, "Who lived more than a couple months, after being infected. So that be how long we have, Jandali. You an' me."

Meviahd was looking between the two of them slowly. She finally rested on Jandali, her glowing eyes wide. She hadn't been right since she'd come back to camp, later than everyone else and only a little before Majir had returned. She hadn't spoken directly to the hunter since he'd sat by the fire, save for refusing his bottle. He had barely looked at her.

All the trolls at camp knew that Majir had been infected, because he'd told one or two, and the news had spread like wildfire. Jandali had told them nothing of himself. But Majir _knew, _and. Jandali was sure of it. Somehow, the hunter had guessed he was infected long before that, and now he was baiting him.

It had been a while since Majir had spoken and been greeted with only silence. Meviahd was staring into the fire again, and Gabriel hadn't said a word since he'd been accused. The soldier next to Majir shifted nervously, clearly not having counted on an argument, and said, "Ya know, mon, I think Rondo wanted ta see ya before-"

"I heard it makes ya go berserk, right up at the end," Majir acted as if he hadn't heard the other troll. He was speaking directly to Jandali again.

The shaman went quiet for a few seconds. In an even voice, he said, "Yes. That's true."

"Or you're too sick ta move, an ya just rip off all of ya skin. After a couple months." Majir continued.

"Majir," Meviahd said very quietly. Jandali, the closest to her, seemed to be the only one to hear.

"The brave ones kill themselves," Majir said, "Maybe I should just put'a gun in my mouth and blow out my brai-"

He didn't get to finish because Jandali was pummeling him in the mouth. The shaman was seeing red, because he _knew_. Majir was talking about Caddi, Jandali just _knew_, and he'd be damned if he was going to let the hunter get away with it.

Jandali had sprang up and across the fire in an instant, tackling the hunter to the ground and smashing a fist into his mouth. The tequila bottle went flying. Majir laughed through the blood, as if he was glad Jandali had finally thrown the first punch. The shaman managed to get another fist into Majir's nose, straddling the hunter, before Majir sat up and simply began to wail on him.

The hunter was younger, and fitter, and even drunker. The surrounding soldiers all jumped to attention at the sounds of a scuffle, but they did not expect it in their own camp. Jandali was dimly aware that Meviahd was yelling, standing over them, but Jandali was on his back now. Majir was ramming the left half of his face with a fist like a chunk of granite, heedless of the soldier trying to drag him off. Jandali's vision swam. He began to black out, panting.

There was an animal shriek, then the pressure on his chest was released. When Jandali could see again the dark shape of Devi Devi was looming over him, wings spread. The hippogryph's beak was open wide in a noiseless hiss. He had left the camp earlier, flying out over the Desolace hills after he was sure there were no more satyr left, but he couldn't have returned at a better time.

"Fools. You've better things to do than blacken each other's faces." Snorting, Devi Devi stood back so that Jandali could rise. Meviahd had come to his side, and she held out her hand to help him, but Jandali ignored it. He couldn't stand the awful look on her face.

There was a thick silence that hung over camp. Majir had stood, breathing hard and staunching his bleeding nose. He fixed Meviahd with a red look, then swung around and strode off between the surrounding fires. The flashing light caught the severe, straight line of his spine, and his fists clenched at his side.

Devi Devi shook his mane of turquoise feathers and regarded Jandali a moment before he said, "There are graver happenings of more importance. I bear a message for you from the Cenarion Circle. They received news today from a tauren using a scrying stone, in a town called Jin'Jeda."

Jandali froze, hand pressed gently to the side of his mauled face.

"I am sorry," Devi Devi said. He sounded like he meant it, "They thought you would want to know. The woman leading your vilage, your Atal'Dali, passed away last night."

A ripple of commotion followed this. Those trolls that understood common started up the cry, followed by groans from those that heard the translation. Jandali could barely hear them over the roaring in his ears. A wail rose up across the small camp.

The Atal'Dali was dead. But Jandali knew her as Zuri, who had loved him perhaps before her sister even had, and who had ran with him hunting tigers in the islands behind Sen'Jin when they were children. Her brilliant orange hair and fiery words, the strong set of her shoulders as she surveyed the production of Jin'Jeda, those things could not be gone. He may have fought with her since finding her again at the shaman village, but Jandali had never wanted this.

Devi Devi bowed his massive head for a moment and admitted, apologetically, "It was _Un'thea'shal."_

The Growing Death. _La Grippa, _The Choke. Gabriel had told them that each race was coming up with their own names for it, the infection that had gripped Azeroth in it's clawed fist. The infection that Jandali had given Zuri, when she had tried to kiss him all those times in Jin'Jeda. The shaman felt the world rush away from him. He stumbled, and felt a slight hand catch him.

Jandali pushed Meviahd away from him, but she stood at his elbow, watching him. He knew she knew. Gabriel was standing nearby as well, trying to catch Jandali's eye, but he wouldn't have understood the whole truth of it.

Zuri was dead and it was Jandali's fault.

"They hold services for her in her hometown, I understand," Devi Devi continued. For some reason, even if the rest of the trolls around them hadn't sensed it, Jandali got the feeling that the massive horse hawk knew he was in pain.

"Sen'Jin," Jandali rasped.

"In a day's time," Devi Devi acknowledged, sounding apologetic again. Even with a quick mount, and a wind rider directly to Orgrimmar, Jandali would never make it in time. He responded with a rasping noise, and could almost imagine them hurrying the services. Zuri's parents hated him.

For Caddi, of course. Not that he blamed them. Not that he deserved to even be at her funeral. But to miss it...

Meviahd's hand tightened around his arm, and she said, "We will fly you there."

Devi Devi just nodded. Jandali stared at them. Whispers arose from the surrounding trolls, but not much. Some knew the history of the Jandali, and his relationship with Zuri's family. Yet Devi Devi's approval seemed a strange deterrent, and most of the trolls began to drift away from them, already going back to their bottles and fires. It had been a dark night for them. Even Majir made no reappearance, his absence strangely foreboding. With Jandali gone, the camp would be under his control, but the shaman didn't feel compelled to find him and tell him. The side of Jandali's face was still pounding with pain, beginning to swell.

"You should stay-" Jandali began uncertainly, and Meviahd just shook her head and tugged his arm. Devi Devi gave the shaman a look as if he had suggested something foul. Jandali supposed the invitation for the flight only extended if the night elf was with them. Still, the creature gave no protests as Meviahd clambered up his back. She leaned down and offered her arms to help pull Jandali up. The troll was so embarrassed to find he needed her help.

He settled in behind Meviahd, taking a long moment before putting his hands on her shoulders. The shaman didn't know where they stood anymore. Meviahd, for her part, barely reacted. She had gathered her hands in the ruff of feathers at Devi Devi's neck, and was staring down at her clenched fists.

"Good luck, Jandali," Gabriel called up to him before they took off. The look in the human's face reminded Jandali he would need it. There was a reason he didn't spend much time in his house in Sen'Jin.

When Devi Devi bunched his legs, kicking off and rising into the air like a cork from a bottle, Jandali panicked. He had been braced for it, but the sudden momentum horrified him all the same. The troll's stomach dropped into his toes. Jandali fastened his arms around Meviahd's waist, gripping on for dear life, his chest pressed against her back. After a second or two in the air their speed evened out, still too high off the ground for the shaman to actually calm, but enough for him to realize what he was doing. Jandali was just about to pull away when Meviahd rested one arm over his own, her hand gripping one of his.

Jandali was frozen. He was barely even breathing. Meviahd seemed to mistake his panic for grief, because she said, "I'm so sorry, Jandali. I know she was important to you."

And just like that, it all came crashing down on him. Zuri was dead. It was Jandali's fault. He was dimly aware of making a strangled noise, and letting his head tip forwards against Meviahd's shoulder.

"You didn't know," Jandali heard her murmur over the wind rushing around Devi Devi's wings, and the troll only felt like that made it worse. He sucked in a breath and realized he was sobbing. Jandali tried to stop, but he couldn't. He cried hunched around Meviahd's tiny form, chest shaking, hands gathered into fists in against her hard leather armor. The night elf kept her hand where it was, rubbing a slow, coaxing circle across the back of one of his tightly crunched fists.

When he could breathe again without it breaking in the middle, Jandali straightened up. He placed his hands solidly on her shoulders, trying not to look down. Trying to appear braver than he was, Jandali supposed. He opened his mouth a few times, before working up the courage to yell over the wind, "I killed her. I don't deserve to be there."

"You didn't kill her." Meviahd said.

"I did," Jandali insisted wretchedly, "And I spent the past few months pushing her off of me. I don't _deserve_ it."

Jandali felt, rather than heard, her snort in response, the annoyed noise translating as a jerk of her shoulders. Meviahd shook her head and insisted, "Being hard on yourself won't make her come back."


End file.
